At its core are plans for a “European Centre for Democratic Resilience”, a Europe-wide fact-checking network, and generous support for so-called “trusted media” and a “European influencer network”.
Christine Anderson, MEP for the ESN Group, commented:
“Something like this has no place in a free democracy. It is nothing new that the EU is clinging to – and expanding – a vast system of subsidies for NGOs and civil-society organisations that sign up to the official EU agenda, making them directly financially dependent on the Commission.
Dozens of scandals over unlawful NGO funding clearly have not stopped the EU from harnessing civil society to its own wagon. NGOs are turned into GONGOs – government-organised NGOs, as in China.
All of these measures are aimed at politicising what is called civil society. When the state pays those who decide what the truth is, that is not democracy; it is managed public opinion.
Brussels talks about ‘protecting democracy’ – but what it really means is protecting itself from democratic diversity of opinion. Anyone who tries to exercise political control over media, platforms and influencers is destroying the very foundations they claim to defend.
With this programme, the Commission is setting itself up as Europe’s supreme arbiter of truth – from fact-checking and election observation right through to the promotion of ‘correct’ content.
This is ideological self-empowerment – a European ministry of truth in the name of resilience. But democracy does not need protective walls; it needs freedom and robust debate. Whoever seeks to shield democracy from the people is, in reality, dismantling it.”
