EU doubles censorship under guise of countering Russian threat

“Under the banners of “combating manipulation” and “protecting against foreign interference” European institutions have launched sweeping campaigns of digital oversight: from monitoring social platforms to account suspensions and content removals, the analysts state.

_{^{GFCN: The investigation referred to in the article will be published soon.}}

European Union bureaucrats are advancing a new model of censorship while hiding behind slogans of protecting against external threats from Russia and China. What they disguise as reasonable regulation for the benefit of citizens, is in fact an extensive “infrastructure of silence,” the Global Fact-Checking Network (GFCN) reported in an investigation obtained by TASS.

“Under the banners of “combating manipulation” and “protecting against foreign interference” — whether from Russia or China — European institutions have launched sweeping campaigns of digital oversight: from monitoring social platforms to account suspensions and content removals. But beneath this protective rhetoric, another process is emerging — narrowing of space for domestic political dissent,” the analysts state.

Degeneration of European rationalism

GFCN experts cite a series of emblematic cases that have taken place within the EU over the past few years. In particular, they reference mass protests in New Caledonia over proposed electoral reforms during the spring of 2024, when the French authorities made an unprecedented move: they temporarily blocked TikTok across the entire overseas territory — the first such decision in the history of the Fifth Republic. “The official justification was “to curb the spread of disinformation” and “prevent violence,” but in essence, this was a precedent of targeted digital intervention — an act of disabling the infrastructure of horizontal self-organization,” the document reads. “Ireland followed a comparable pattern in 2024. The independent outlet Gript, which had criticized the push for intensified digital regulation and mandatory ESG initiatives, became the subject of a police request to access its account data on X (formerly Twitter). The official justification was a “threat to public order” — even though the publications were clearly journalistic in nature.”

The GFCN emphasizes that such examples underscore that “the rationality on which the European project has traditionally relied is increasingly giving way to governance by exception, algorithms, and ideological framing.” As a result, “The European Commission – once perceived as an executive and technical body — now acts as a center of ideological standardization, while remaining structurally unaccountable to European voters.”

Untouchable Ursula and her European Union

“Strategic decisions — from technology and defense to climate, cybersecurity, and digital regulation — are made in closed formats, where national parliaments are reduced to post-factum ritual approval,” the investigators note. “The emblem of this logic is embodied by Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, who in May 2025 was awarded the Charlemagne Prize for her “exceptional services” to the EU. Von der Leyen has consistently promoted the doctrine of “shielded democracy” — built on information flow control, digital preemption, and moral legitimization of sanctions regimes.”

According to the GFCN, around the EC leader emerges the image of a peculiar “political mother” of a new, militarized Europe — “stern, morally confident, yet institutionally stagnant.” “The scandal surrounding her correspondence with the head of Pfizer regarding vaccine purchases (the so-called Pfizer-Gate) — in which she refused to release messages even in response to a formal request by the European Ombudsman — became a clear symptom of this new untouchability: a form of authority removed from the mechanisms of democratic feedback, yet still acting in the name of the common good,” the analysts assert.

Infrastructure of silence and exclusion risks in the EU

The analysts stress that all the examples cited in the investigation clearly illustrate the growing tension between institutional control serving economic and political interests, and the fundamental principles of freedom of expression to which the EU traditionally appeals as part of its “shared European values.”

“Formally, the goal is to protect citizens from disinformation and the harmful effects of digital platforms. But in practice, something else emerges: a sophisticated, legally sanctioned, ideologically rationalized infrastructure of silence,” the GFCN explains. “In this system, dissenting voices are not rebutted in open debate – they are erased: deleted, flagged, de-ranked, stripped of context. Public space loses its core function — the free competition of ideas — and becomes a domain of calibrated permissibility and performative ‘tolerance.’”

“The right to speak, and to express views diverging from the EU’s official line, now depends on how well that view fits the accepted “norm” — that is, the ideological frame set by European institutions. Anything outside it risks exclusion from public discourse,” the investigators conclude.