
The European Commission's unelected president, Ursula von der Leyen, has come up with a nifty new idea in the European Union's quest to snuff out democracy on the continent: The "European Democracy Shield."
First proposed by von der Leyen, ironically, at the Copenhagen Democracy Summit in May 2024, von der Leyen stressed that the initiative was needed to "defend" Europe's "democratic values" against external threats. The initiative is reportedly of the highest priority for von der Leyen. According to the European People's Party Group:
"Its purpose is to strengthen the public's resilience to disinformation and to combat foreign manipulation of information....
"The European Commission's initiative states that the Democracy Shield aims to detect, analyse and proactively combat disinformation and information manipulation by setting up a European network of fact-checkers working in all the official languages of the EU. The initiative aims to build societal resilience by increasing digital and media literacy."
This is technospeak for censorship, but you already knew that because this is what the "fact-checkers" at Facebook and Twitter did on behalf of the Biden administration and the FBI until Elon Musk bought Twitter and President Donald Trump was re-elected.
It should be noted here that few Americans are probably aware just how shockingly undemocratic the entire European Union construct already is, even before such a "Democracy Shield" has been fully implemented.
For a start, the EU's executive body, the European Commission, led by von der Leyen, is a technocratic, elite governing body consisting of 27 Commissioners, which can best be compared to ministers. These Commissioners are not elected, but chosen in backroom deals by national governments and come from the top European political and technocratic establishment insiders. The collective European Commission is then submitted as a group for the approval of the European Parliament, which appears to function mainly as a rubber stamp in this regard, as described by Fidias Panayiotou, a Greek Member of European Parliament (MP), who has made it a point to question the undemocratic procedures in the EU.
Of the EU institutions, the unelected European Commission wields the most power over the EU's 400 million citizens, with its exclusive right to propose laws (the elected MEPs, bizarrely, have no such right), implement policies, and everything falling under the management of the day-to-day operations of the EU. The European Commission employs no fewer than 32,000 bureaucrats to help it do all that.
The EU's top decision-making body is the European Council, which consists of each EU member state's head of government plus the unelected President of the European Council (Charles Michel) and the unelected President of the European Commission. This is where broad political and agenda decisions are made on everything from foreign and economic policy to more internal matters.
Although it can be argued that the European Council technically consists of elected heads of state, the decision-making takes place behind closed doors most of the time, while the European Parliament appears to be a lame duck that has zero influence on those decisions, especially as they pertain to foreign policy, defense and budget approval – major areas that are completely decided by the unelected elites.
The European Parliament, although it is the only EU institution with elected representatives, appears mainly to function as a democratic fig leaf, reduced to proposing amendments to the European Commission's proposed legislation. In its entire history, the European Parliament has only rejected three pieces of legislation proposed by the European Commission.
This is a closed-door technocratic and elitist coterie -- the rule of the unelected few over almost an entire continent of 400 million people -- meaning that EU initiatives with huge implications for Europeans get decided without a single ordinary European having a say in the matter.
EU laws have to be implemented in the various EU member states, who are obliged to conform to the madness emanating from the EU and turn it into national law.
The European Commission's own website states:
"According to the EU treaties, the Commission may take legal action – an infringement procedure – against an EU country that fails to implement EU law. The Commission may refer the issue to the Court of Justice, which can impose financial sanctions,"
Arguably one of the most damaging of the European Commission's initiatives that no European citizen has asked for is the European Green Deal, which is leading EU citizens to financial ruin, and transforming the EU into an economic backwater, in the quest to transform the EU into a "net-zero" region by 2050.
"Climate change and environmental degradation are an existential threat to Europe and the world," the EU's website blatantly lies.
"To overcome these challenges, the European Green Deal will transform the European Union (EU) into a modern, resource-efficient and competitive economy, ensuring:
• no net emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050;
• economic growth decoupled from resource use;
• no person and no place left behind."
Trillions of EU taxpayer euros are compelled to finance this self-destructive climate madness while Europeans continue to deal with skyrocketing energy prices -- themselves the result of the climate madness -- a housing crisis, sky-high prices on consumer goods and unvetted mass migration from third-world countries.
Although the EU's "green deal" is clearly failing, and the EU knows it, instead of ditching it, the EU oligarchs are instead offering subsidies to those European industries that are struggling to stay competitive. No such subsidies, unfortunately, will be offered to the EU's struggling citizenry, who did not ask for this, vote for this or have any say in it.
According to one report, Ewa Zajączkowska-Hernik, a Polish MEP affiliated with the conservative Europe of Sovereign Nations, "accused von der Leyen of using the Green Deal as a weapon against Europe's economy and agriculture," saying:
"You are the face of the European Green Deal, and this Deal is doing nothing but tearing apart Europe's economic stability while sacrificing our agricultural lifeblood."
Another catastrophic EU initiative about which no European citizen was consulted, is the EU's new Migration Pact, which will see the further deterioration of national sovereignty and the continued influx of migrants into the European Union. The pact, instead of simply closing the EU's external open borders, requires EU member states to distribute migrants between themselves under penalty of financial sanctions. There has been no public discussion about this.
In Ireland, Member of Parliament Carol Nolan said:
"Has government encouraged the voices of ordinary people to be heard on these issues? We all know the answer to that.... The pact is morally and politically bankrupt. It is the product of an EU establishment that is rotten to the core, and which treats the views of ordinary citizens as political poison."
A third EU regulation with disastrous impacts on EU citizens is the Digital Security Act (DSA), which under the pretext of creating a "safer and more accountable digital space" strangles the pitiful remains of European free speech even further. In line with already existing crushing anti-free speech laws, as against "hate speech" in Germany, the DSA requires online platforms to follow rigid rules, including the requirement to remove vague and undefined illegal content, such as "hate speech" and "disinformation" or face fines.
The DSA, now the law of the land throughout the member states of the EU, is being weaponized against Elon Musk -- whom European elites despise -- and his X platform. The European Commission is reportedly preparing to impose huge fines on Musk for breaching the DSA by, among other things, refusing to allow external "fact-checkers" on his platform to flag "disinformation". Who, of course, would be checking the EU's "fact-checkers"?
This is George Orwell's "newspeak" on steroids, where censorship and elitist oligarchical overreach is labeled "democracy."
The European Union member states have finally arrived – while never asking the Europeans involved – at their own dystopian future.
Robert Williams is based in the United States.