I mean, the lack of necessity of trying to change the voting behavior (because you're dealing with a dictatorship/oligarchy that doesn't respond to popular opinion) isn't exactly a point for the EU here; getting caught up in the method is missing the forest for the trees. The point is that the EU isn't above forcing using its influence to force bad policy on foreign countries for its own gain, so when it loses the propaganda war with America/Russia it's not due to some moral standard. I absolutely count using its economic clout to force unequal trade deals on weaker countries as "influence operations;" what America and Russia do is just how you do that with democracies. There's also that one time it forced disastrous austerity on Greece. The fact that the EU doesn't have its own Murdoch isn't a testament to its moral integrity.