The EU wants to stifle critical voices on social media

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BrusselsReport.eu
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Seal of the Stasi - Motto: Schild und Schwert der Partei (Shield and Sword of the Party) - Copyright: Ministerium für Staatssicherheit der DDR, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

By former Dutch diplomat Johannes Vervloed

The EU has devised “chat control” to gain far-reaching authority over social media. And more plans are in the pipeline: a European digital identity that could be linked to social media accounts. No EU ID, no access to social platforms. Goodbye privacy and confidentiality of correspondence; welcome to the era of digital EU governance, complete with far-reaching control over so-called “fake news”—the Brussels euphemism for EU criticism. Are we going to let that happen?

If the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, gets her way, the EU will introduce several measures that restrict freedom of expression. Anonymous criticism of the EU would no longer be possible. A chat-control regulation would monitor everything posted on social media, and identity checks would reveal who said what. The identity-linking requirement is not yet in place, but is being strongly promoted by socialists. Prime Minister Sánchez, for example, openly advocates a European Digital Identity Wallet that would link social media accounts to a mandatory EU digital ID.

Sánchez’s proposal is now on the agenda of the European Council.

If the upcoming mandatory EU ID—already supported by Dutch State Secretary Van Huffelen, despite opposition from the House of Representatives—is linked to chat control, and if access to social platforms becomes conditional on holding an EU ID, then digital governance will become a reality. A dystopia in which none of us want to find ourselves. 

Chat control

Although the European Commission’s initial proposal for chat control was voted down in the Council of the European Union, a revised version has now been adopted.

The original proposal was rejected because combating child pornography—the official justification for chat control—should not come at the expense of freedom of expression. The Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, Poland, Finland, the Czech Republic, Austria and Estonia voted against it; France abstained. The revised proposal, which passed, claims to better balance privacy and surveillance. In reality, the differences are minimal. Scanning of social-media messages is no longer formally mandatory, but is effectively enforced. 

Scanning

In practice, social-media platforms will behave as though scanning were mandatory. To avoid legal risk and public pressure, they will carry out extensive scans to detect and remove child-abuse material. Failing to scan does not shield them from liability or reputational harm.

Technical realities also matter: client-side scanning (CSS)—in which messages are scanned locally before encryption—remains in use on social platforms. This means that even “voluntary” scanning still results in substantial surveillance. In effect, the revised proposal replicates the original, only without explicit legal compulsion.  

“Fake news”

A second measure, bringing us another step closer to digital governance, is the so-called European Democracy Shield: a centre of (supposedly independent) fact-checkers that will “protect” the public from fake news—the term used in the Brussels corridors to describe EU-critical content.

The Democracy Shield is a proposal by the European Commission to strengthen democracy and protect it against threats such as disinformation, foreign interference, and manipulation via social media and AI. It has not yet been fully adopted into law. The Council and the European Parliament have reached a provisional agreement within the framework of the Media Freedom Act, but a final vote is still pending.

These measures will be used to counter criticism of the EU by labelling it “fake news.” Of course this is denied at every turn, but with chat control, unwelcome opinions can be flagged and—once linked to a personal EU ID—easily demonised. People will become more cautious about what they post. Fact-checkers will decide what is and is not acceptable.  

Censorship

Together, these measures constitute a direct attempt to stifle unwelcome criticism of the EU—blatant censorship, and a violation of the secrecy of correspondence.

The second proposal still requires formal approval by the Council, but in the preliminary Coreper consultations, the ambassadors of the Member States have already given ita positive opinion. Only last-minute intervention by national parliaments can still block it. Hence my appeal to the Dutch Parliament.

The Dutch House of Representatives has already passed a motion instructing the government “not to agree to any proposal that does not completely rule out chat monitoring, out of concern for privacy, civil rights and the protection of end-to-end encryption.” The House will need to remind the government of this.

Ultimately, the Dutch vote will not be decisive—the key lies with Germany. If Germany supports the amended proposal, a qualified majority will be achieved.

As noted, the greatest danger is the interplay of these measures: the combination of EU digital IDs, chat control, fake-news countermeasures such as the Democracy Shield, plus the Digital Services Act, the Code of Practice on Disinformation, and the AI Act.

The Digital Services Act (DSA) seeks to combat fake news and disinformation by requiring platforms like Google, Facebook, TikTok and X to be transparent about how they handle false or misleading information—specifically, information deemed false or misleading by the European Commission.

The EU’s AI Act combats fake news by restricting AI systems that enable manipulative or misleading applications.

The fight against fake news is thus waged on two fronts: the DSA targets platforms and their content-moderation duties, while the AI Act targets the technological sources of misinformation. Together, they aim to combat fake news as effectively as possible—at considerable cost to free expression.  

Opposition from the US

The US government has condemned the EU’s measures. President Trump has personally criticised them—not out of concern for free speech, but because American companies such as Google, Meta and X would face significant additional burdens. He has threatened countermeasures if the EU does not amend its legislation.

Whatever the stated intentions, the balance between combating misinformation and protecting free expression has been completely lost. It is like shooting a mosquito with a cannon. Chat control is supposedly meant to combat child pornography. Yet child-abuse material is rarely found on mainstream social media—it is primarily located on the dark web. Meanwhile, freedom of expression is curtailed and the privacy of correspondence violated.

Combating child abuse is important, but scanning messages uncovers all kinds of other private information—information that should stay private and not fall into the hands of third parties, especially not governments that may use it to control citizens’ behaviour. This is not far-fetched: just as banks must disclose client data to tax authorities, social-media companies could be forced to hand over results from chat scans.  

Dangerous developments

The danger of combining all these measures is obvious. Look at the United Kingdom, where similar controls have already been introduced. People who have posted undesirable messages online have already been removed from their homes. And it can go further. With the digital euro launching next October, the Big Brother scenario will accelerate.

Taken together, these EU measures raise serious concerns about freedom of expression and government control over citizens’ behaviour. Time will tell whether these concerns are misplaced—or whether we are slowly drifting towards totalitarian digital governance within the European Union.

 

Originally published in Dutch by OpinieZ

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