by Guy Millière
The DSA [Digital Services Act] decrees that social media and websites must "police what they publish" or risk high fines. It is, of course, the European Commission itself that decides what is "illegal" or "harmful", so it can issue whatever judgments it wants.
The EU sanctions have resulted in grotesque consequences for both men. Their bank accounts in the EU have been frozen. They cannot use their credit cards. They have no right to enter EU countries. Baud is subsisting on the food stored in his house in Belgium.... According to one report, "[h]is ability to travel inside the EU was revoked. He cannot even return to his own country."
The French government, which sanctioned both men while providing no proof of guilt or affording them due process, has asked that the sanctions be extended to all EU member countries.
While one might disagree with what the two men said and wrote, freedom of speech is, or should be, one of the fundamental principles of a democratic society, which France and the EU purport to be.
France's request that the EU sanction "propagandists," and the EU's decision to take arbitrary measures without even asking France for any proof of wrongdoing or offering any kind of due process, signals that what is happening in France could easily spread to the rest of Europe. The EU already has in place crippling censorship measures for online media and social networks.
The DSA [Digital Services Act] decrees that social media and websites must "police what they publish" or risk high fines. It is, of course, the European Commission itself that decides what is "illegal" or "harmful", so it can issue whatever judgments it wants.
During the 2024 US election campaign, when Elon Musk said he would conduct an interview with then-candidate Donald Trump on X, the social media Musk owns, Thierry Breton, then European Commissioner for Internal Market and Services and the "mastermind" behind the DSA, sent Musk a letter saying that the EU could levy fines against X if the interview contained "illegal content." Musk, replying that he did not accept threats, went ahead with the interview. The EU promptly fined X €120 million (about $140 million) in December 2025 for breaching the DSA. Musk described the EU officials as "woke Stasi commissars" and added, "The EU should be abolished".
The DSA was written by unelected, unaccountable, untransparent and irremovable senior EU officials, then voted in by the European Parliament, which has no real power and is just an approval body for what the European Commission decides. The DSA was not voted on by the national parliaments of EU member states. All citizens of EU member countries are now faced with a mandated requirement to which they never agreed.
The European Commission, apparently not content with that, is reportedly planning to go further. It is preparing a new law, "Chat Control", which would allow the "automatic scan[ning] of private content (texts, images, videos) sent through messaging platforms such as WhatsApp and Telegram, or prompts sent to AI platforms (e.g. ChatGPT) [that] would take place 'client-side,' before its encryption, meaning directly on your phone, tablet or computer." The "Chat Control" software would then "forward any material flagged as prohibited to law enforcement agencies." This would herald potential total control of every online conversation and the impossibility of speaking freely without being monitored.
Every effort is being made by those in power within the ruling structures of the EU to ensure that parties in favor of national sovereignty and opposed to uncontrolled immigration and the Islamization of Europe are kept out of power, despite the exploding support from voters.
The fatal vulnerability of all democracies is that politicians are usually more concerned with seeking votes and keeping their jobs than about where their countries are going.
Undermining freedom of speech, freedom of the media, and freedom of political choice -- as well as treating disagreements on important issues such as foreign policy, immigration, Islamization and national sovereignty as punishable crimes -- has become an integral part of the erosion of European civilization. The idea of democracy was born in Europe, but European countries and the EU are painstakingly throwing it away.
December 15. France. Two men, Jacques Baud and Xavier Moreau, who commented online about the war in Ukraine, discovered that they were among 12 people being sanctioned by the European Union for allegedly spreading propaganda for the Russian government. Some of the 12 people are propagandists, just not them. No evidence so far has proven that they had any ties with either the Russian government or Russian intelligence agencies.
Baud, who lives in Belgium, is both a former colonel in the Swiss Army and a former member of the Swiss Strategic Intelligence Service. He has published several books on the war in Ukraine, and apparently uses various sources, most not Russian. He appears on radio in France, Belgium and Switzerland. Moreau, a former captain in the French Army, lives in Russia, where he created a consultancy business, Sokol Holding, for several embassies, and Stratpol, a website for geopolitical analysis. Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, he has used many sources, some Russian, most not.
The EU sanctions have resulted in grotesque consequences for both men. Their bank accounts in the EU have been frozen. They cannot use their credit cards. They have no right to enter EU countries.
Baud is subsisting on the food stored in his house in Belgium. He has also been deprived of his right to speak on EU television or radio stations. According to one report, "[h]is ability to travel inside the EU was revoked. He cannot even return to his own country." Lawyers are trying to help him obtain authorization to travel back to Switzerland.
Xavier Moreau, in Russia, also has an apartment in Paris. He cannot even pay his French property taxes. Lawyers are trying to help him find a way to pay what the French government claims he owes.
The French government, which sanctioned both men while providing no proof of guilt or affording them due process, has asked that the sanctions be extended to all EU member countries. The French government and the EU did not even send them a letter to inform the two men of the sanctions against them, let alone give them an opportunity to defend themselves or prove their innocence in a court of law. The decisions against them appear arbitrary and authoritarian.
While one might disagree with what the two men said and wrote, freedom of speech is, or should be, one of the fundamental principles of a democratic society, which France and the EU purport to be. Political disagreements should not lead to punishment.
It would be a mistake to think that the sanctions against these men are a mistake or just a simple and regrettable slip-up. It is part of a trend.
The French government has increasingly been making overbearing decisions that infringe on freedom of speech. An official French institution, Arcom, in charge of controlling what is said on French television and radio, has the power of life and death over them. In February 2025, Arcom decided to close a French television channel, C8. Arcom claimed that C8 did not respect its "public service" obligations. C8's main talk show host, Cyril Hanouna, has often criticized French President Emmanuel Macron and has invited commentators who are never invited on other talk shows, such as members of the "yellow vest revolt" or physicians who disagreed with Macron's decisions during the Covid-19 crisis.
Macron reportedly asked members of the French government to boycott Hanouna; several accused him of belonging to the "far right". Arcom -- claiming that Hanouna spoke "disrespectfully" to both the socialist mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, and a leftist member of the national assembly, Louis Boyard -- imposed heavy fines on the channel: €300,000 ($350,000) for Hidalgo and €3.5 million ($4,000,000) for Boyard; then simply decided to close the channel. Four hundred people lost their jobs. Hanouna could, theoretically, create a new talk show on a different channel, but his new employer strongly "invited" him to adopt an "apolitical tone".
In June 2025, TV Libertés, a small, private television station that includes commentators who criticize Macron and often disagree with French foreign policy, was confronted with the closure of its bank accounts -- forcing it to the brink of bankruptcy. The bank gave no explanation; it just said that the decision had been made "at a high level". TV Libertés could survive by opening a bank account at a different bank, but what just happened could easily happen again -- and the channel might not survive.
What happened to TV Libertés was also visited upon Marc Touati, a French economist who produces a successful weekly podcast. Not only was his bank account closed, but also the accounts of his wife and children. Again, the bank gave no explanation other than, again, that the decision had been made "at a high level".
Macron, responding to a journalist who asked him if he wanted to control information in France, said:
"I think it would be important to have labels given by professionals who can say 'This complies with ethical standards,' or 'This comes from people who manipulate information' ; it's a dangerous matter, information."
Philippe de Villiers, a businessman, former Member of the National Assembly and former Secretary of State for Culture, replied:
"A Ministry of Truth is what Macron dreams of, but he doesn't know that it has already been imagined, in a book by Orwell."
France's request that the EU sanction "propagandists," and the EU's decision to take arbitrary measures without even asking France for any proof of wrongdoing or offering any kind of due process, signals that what is happening in France could easily spread to the rest of Europe. The EU already has in place crippling censorship measures for online media and social networks.
The European Commission (the executive arm of the EU that writes European laws and directives and then enforces them) in 2023 created the Digital Services Act (DSA). It aims to control the content of social media and websites (every newspaper, magazine, TV, or radio station has a website) and to forbid content defined as "illegal" or "harmful". The DSA decrees that social media and websites must "police what they publish" or risk high fines. It is, of course, the European Commission itself that decides what is "illegal" or "harmful", so it can issue whatever judgments it wants.
During the 2024 US election campaign, when Elon Musk said he would conduct an interview with then-candidate Donald Trump on X, the social media Musk owns, Thierry Breton, then European Commissioner for Internal Market and Services and the "mastermind" behind the DSA, sent Musk a letter saying that the EU could levy fines against X if the interview contained "illegal content."
Musk, replying that he did not accept threats, went ahead with the interview. The EU promptly fined X €120 million (about $140 million) in December 2025 for breaching the DSA. Musk described the EU officials as "Woke Stasi commissars" and added, "The EU should be abolished".
The DSA was written by unelected, unaccountable, untransparent and irremovable senior EU officials, then voted in by the European Parliament, which has no real power and is just an approval body for what the European Commission decides. The DSA was not voted on by the national parliaments of EU member states. All citizens of EU member countries are now faced with a mandated requirement to which they never agreed.
The European Commission, apparently not content with that, is reportedly planning to go further. It is preparing a new law, "Chat Control", which would allow the "automatic scan[ning] of private content (texts, images, videos) sent through messaging platforms such as WhatsApp and Telegram, or prompts sent to AI platforms (e.g. ChatGPT) [that] would take place 'client-side,' before its encryption, meaning directly on your phone, tablet or computer."
The "Chat Control" software would then "forward any material flagged as prohibited to law enforcement agencies." This would herald potential total control of every online conversation and the impossibility of speaking freely without being monitored.
Freedom of speech -- one of the main components of democracy, which goes hand-in-hand with political freedom -- is under severe threat in the EU. One report characterized the EU's attitude toward citizens' online participation as "Europe's tech law has turned Europeans into second-class digital citizens."
In Romania's 2024 presidential election, polls showed that Calin Georgescu, the leading candidate in the first round, would win. Georgescu, highly critical of the EU, was advocating for his country to regain more sovereignty. Pressure from the EU, amid unproven rumors that he benefitted from "Russian interference," led to the cancellation of the second round of the election. When the presidential election was held again in 2025, Georgescu was banned from running.
In Germany, the AfD (Alternative for Germany) is now the country's strongest political party. Its program is nationalist and conservative. The AfD supports free market economics and backing the only democracy in the Middle East, Israel. Germany's domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, classified the AfD as a "right-wing extremist" group. Understandably, its rivals, other German political parties, would evidently be happy to see it banned and permanently excluded from German political life.
In France, on May 31, 2025, a court -- on the pretext of misappropriation of EU funds -- handed down a four-year prison sentence to National Rally Party leader Marine Le Pen, and banned her from holding public office for five years. Le Pen, who had been favored to win the 2027 presidential election, has appealed, but it is unlikely that a court will overturn the sentence. Her party's next-in-line, Jordan Bardella, could also reportedly win the presidential election, but in the summer of 2025 police, acting on the orders of the National Financial Prosecutor, seized documents concerning him from the party headquarters, and he is expected to be prosecuted and convicted on some pretext, as well.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán refuses to allow mass immigration into his country -- which was already occupied by the Islamic Ottoman Empire for nearly 160 years (1541-1699). He does not appear eager for a return to that and is determined to defend Hungary's sovereignty. As a result, he faces significant EU pressure, which includes heavy fines imposed on Hungary.
The political positions of Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico and Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš are similar to Hungary's; they too could soon face the same EU punishments as Orbán.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who shares many of Orban's positions, is currently an exception – she has no problem with the EU. Italy, however, already has admitted vast numbers of migrants. They now number roughly 9% of the population -- but reportedly commit 30% of the crimes, often against other migrants. Last October, Human Rights Watch urged "Italy to end its migration cooperation agreement with Libya, saying the arrangement 'has proven to be a framework for violence and suffering, and should be revoked, not renewed.'"
Every effort is being made by those in power within the ruling structures of the EU to ensure that parties in favor of national sovereignty and opposed to uncontrolled immigration and the Islamization of Europe are kept out of power, despite the exploding support from voters.
Historian Daniel Pipes calls these parties "civilizationist": their main aim is to save European civilization, whereas those in power within the ruling structures of the EU seem ready to let European civilization fade away.
US Vice President J.D. Vance, in saying that Europe is eroding free speech and core democratic values, shocked most European leaders, yet every day shows how right, if not inordinately diplomatic, he was.
Europe, according to the Trump administration's 2025 National Security Strategy, is not just in decline, but risks "civilizational erasure." Most European leaders again appeared ruffled, offended and shocked, but the words, sadly, appear true.
The fatal vulnerability of all democracies is that politicians are usually more concerned with seeking votes and keeping their jobs than about where their countries are going.
Undermining freedom of speech, freedom of the media, and freedom of political choice -- as well as treating disagreements on important issues such as foreign policy, immigration, Islamization and national sovereignty as punishable crimes -- has become an integral part of the erosion of European civilization. The idea of democracy was born in Europe, but European countries and the EU are painstakingly throwing it away. It would be most unfortunate if old authoritarian temptations from a hundred years ago were to resurface in Europe just when they finally seemed to have been eradicated.
Those in power in France and within the ruling structures of the EU have been increasingly violating the fundamental principles upon which the "European project" was founded. These rulers seem indifferent to the possibility that they are leading Europe to its irrevocable doom.
Dr. Guy Millière, a professor at the University of Paris, is the author of 27 books on France and Europe.
Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/22208/european-union-woke-stasi
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