America’s free-speech war on the EU

If I were a bookie, I would be making odds now about when the European Union will finally unravel and die. Unless there is an imminent and drastic course correction, the blessed event cannot be far off. I might need a Doomsday Clock akin to the one publicized by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Their clock hovers near midnight, which signifies nuclear Armageddon, the minute hand pushed closer or farther away from the blast depending on minatory world events. My clock would measure the EU’s proximity to implosion. Its recent decision to fine Elon Musk and his company X €120 million for “non-compliance with transparency obligations” has me nudging the minute hand closer to midnight.

“Non-compliance with transparency obligations.” What do you reckon that means? It means Musk’s commitment to free speech has horned in on the EU’s chief domestic product, which is censorship and its attendant regulatory impositions. In announcing its punitive action against Musk, an EU spokesman was careful to say the decision “has nothing to do with content moderation,” which is bureaucratese for “censorship.”

The commentator Michael Shellenberger got it exactly right. “The EU wants X to give its data to government-selected ‘researchers’ so they can identify which posts and advertisements should be censored. This is a censorship-by-proxy strategy.”

The EU’s allergy to free speech, which is a symptom of its allergy to democratic rule, seems terminal. In the US, thanks to people such as Musk and Trump, we have seen a rebirth of free speech. Much of Europe is stuck in the slough of despond, struggling to transform Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four from a warning about totalitarianism into a user manual for the elite. Why is that? Because the EU is a profoundly undemocratic regime, run by a bureaucratic elite that is appointed, not elected, and that is accountable only to itself, not to the voters.

... the White House just released its 2025 National Security Strategy report. Europe’s economic performance and military posture are dismal. But that is the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Economic decline, the report says, is

eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure. The larger issues facing Europe include activities of the European Union and other transnational bodies that undermine political liberty and sovereignty, migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence. Should present trends continue, the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less.

If I were a bookie, I would be making odds now about when the European Union will finally unravel and die.

Like many such American comments, this is simply nonsense.

All EU members economies are far too integrated in the EU for them to leave: even France, which uses the Euro, would have to go back to the Franc and abandon any hope of financing its public debt. That would require debt repudiation, loss of EU markets and something approaching national bankruptcy.

Even Poland and Hungary are in no hurry to leave the common market and doing so would be suicidal. Being an EU member is overwhelmingly viewed positively, even if certain policies (like gay "marriage") are detested.

Plus, like all the other Germanic language countries, Americans are simply naive about how most of Europe deals with bureaucracies and assume some "good faith" effort will be made to comply with every idiotic rule issued by Brussels of the ECHR.

Since I've spent a lot of time in Poland, recently, here's how it really works:

A rule comes down from Brussels. If Poles don't like it, the Sejm will announce a "study" on how to implement enabling legislation. It sits for a year. The resulting legislation may or may not mirror the actual regulation. The the ministry responsible gets the legislation. It sits there for a year, too. They issue regulations, maybe those differ even more from the Brussels regulations. Now the lawsuits start. An enforcement action is brought. The company contends it made a good faith effort or the regulation is too burdensome. In many cases, the bureaucrats will agree, and reduce the penalty to a slap on the wrist. Say the penalty is harsh. The company appeals to the courts. The courts say the company broke the rule but, yes, the penalty is too harsh and reduce it to a slap on the wrist. Or maybe they say the rule or law was not promulgated properly: then we're back to step 1 or 2. As a last resort, if the Brussels rule is really obnoxious, the courts will say the Polish constitution strips the Polish state of any ability to enforce it.

Polish bureaucrats and lawyers spent most of the past two centuries thwarting idiotic rules from occupying powers. They're very good at it. In the Latin countries, the Balkans, and Greece, tax and regulatory evasion are raised to a high art.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.