The EU loves talking about freedom.
Just look at one of its recent press releases, launching something called the European Democracy Shield, which promises to protect everything from “free people” to “free elections” to — this being Brussels — “a vibrant civil society”.
All admirable stuff, perhaps, at least on paper.
In reality, though, the Democracy Shield is just the latest vision in unfreedom: suppressing dissent and policing speech under the pretext of defending democracy from foreign interference and fake news.
As part of the Democracy Shield, the Commission proposes the creation of a Monitoring Centre that would identify and remove “false content” and “disinformation” from the internet. As Henna Virkkunen, Executive Vice President for Security and Democracy, stated, the Shield will enable Europe to “respond faster and more effectively to information manipulation and hybrid threats”. The EU’s High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy, Kaja Kallas, made no secret of the anti-Russian nature of the initiative: “we are seeing campaigns, including from Russia, specifically designed to polarise our citizens, undermine trust in our institutions and pollute politics in our countries.”
The term “independent” appears repeatedly in the press release. A new “independent European network of fact-checkers” will be set up in all official EU languages, while the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO), the EU’s flagship “fact-checking” network, financed to the tune of almost €30 million, will gain new “independent” analytical powers to monitor elections and crisis situations. But, remember, independence in Brussels translates to financial dependence on the Commission. Indeed, to guarantee this “independence”, the Commission promises generous funding to “independent” NGOs and media outlets.
The Democracy Shield builds upon the recent Digital Services Act (DSA), the most sweeping internet regulation ever implemented in Europe. In theory, these initiatives are meant to protect democracy; in practice, they do the opposite. Their aim isn’t to “fight disinformation”, as claimed, but rather to control the narrative at a time when Europe’s political elites are facing unprecedented levels of public distrust, by centralising control over the flow of information and imposing a single “truth” defined by Brussels. In short, the European Commission is building a continent-wide censorship machine
As one EU diplomat recently put it, in truly Orwellian fashion: “Freedom of speech remains for everyone. At the same time, however, citizens must be free from interference.” But who decides what constitutes “interference”? Who determines what is “true” and what is “fake”? The same institutions and corporate media outlets that have repeatedly engaged in fearmongering and disinformation themselves. Just a few weeks ago, Ursula von der Leyen claimed that the GPS system on her plane had been jammed by Russia — an allegation quickly debunked by analysts. Meanwhile, the BBC, often held up as a paragon of journalistic integrity, was recently caught editing footage of a Donald Trump speech to make it appear more extreme.
The EU claims to be protecting citizens from “falsehoods” but on what democratic or moral basis does the Commission assume the authority to decide what is true, especially when it is clear that the EU’s political-media establishment itself engages in disinformation and propaganda on a regular basis? Moreover, when so-called independent fact-checkers are hand-picked and financed by the Commission itself, the result is a closed feedback loop: the EU funds institutions that then “verify” and amplify the EU’s own narratives. The Democracy Shield, like its predecessors, thus institutionalises the power to define reality itself.
In a series of reports, I have shown that the European Union already operates a vast propaganda and censorship apparatus that spans every level of civil society — NGOs, think tanks, the media and even academia. The cornerstone of this system is a network of EU-funded programmes — notably CERV (Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values), Creative Europe and the Jean Monnet initiative — that collectively funnel billions of euros into organisations that are, in theory, “independent” but are in fact deeply enmeshed in the Brussels machine.
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