European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen proposed the creation of an EU-funded European Center for Democratic Resilience, an initiative that conservatives and right-wing populace warn could become a state-controlled speech police.
My name is Joseph Hammond, foreign correspondent for The Washington Times.
This is my Q&A on the European Center for Democratic Resilience.
What is occurring right now within the European Union around free speech?
Right now, there’s a lot of concern in Europe around free speech, in particular over disinformation. And we live in a day and age where we have AI-generated content and we have other technology tools which are allowing disinformation actors to really spread disinformation across the continent. And a lot of this that the European Union is concerned about is funded and supported by Russia, with a lot of elections this year. This is an important issue for many countries.
Why is there debate about this and why is it heated?
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Why it’s an issue of concern is that a lot of these disinformation campaigns or anti-disinformation campaigns in the past have been targeted at conservative and right-wing populist parties and there is a concern that the European Union funding will be used to de-platform European conservatives and populists, as we have seen in a number of countries already.
Secondly, there’s a concern amongst a lot of these countries, given their history, given the fact that some of these countries were totalitarian and communist regimes or totalitarian and fascist regimes in the past. They have that history, so they’re very concerned about efforts to control free speech and to control debate.
Watch the video for the full conversation.
Read more from Joseph Hammond: European conservatives sound alarm over Brussels-led crackdown on ‘disinformation’
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