In line with announcements by European Commission Executive VP Henna Virkkunen, a new special committee entitled European Democracy Shield (EUDS) has been launched to strengthen Brussels’ existing arsenal of controls on tech giants and compliance with anti-hate-speech laws. French MEP Nathalie Loiseau of the Renew group has been elected to head the committee. Announced as chair before the vote had even taken place, she took office through a process blatantly denying democracy—a significant founding act for a structure clearly designed to lock down unwanted opinion.
For several months now, the European Union has been putting in place a whole system designed to flag up online content and opinions deemed illegal, through the Digital Services Act (DSA), which came into force in August 2023. But Donald Trump’s return in the United States and the active presence of Elon Musk at his side have given the bureaucrats in Brussels an excuse to up the ante with a new initiative. The European Democracy Shield (EDS)—a toolbox, whose development and implementation the EUDS committee is meant to oversee—made up of ‘independent’ teams to “combat foreign information manipulation, interference, and disinformation; to strengthen the EU’s ability to detect, analyze, and proactively counter threats; and to also address domestic threats to democracy.”
On Monday, February 3rd, the chairman of the EUDS Committee was due to be elected—but the results of this election were known in advance. Nathalie Loiseau, of the centrist Renew group, former head of Emmanuel Macron’s party list for the 2019 European elections, was presented as the chair before the vote was even held. “Nathalie Loiseau will be elected this evening at 6 p.m.’, stated a French newsletter published on the morning of February 3rd.
MEP Virginie Joron, a member of the Rassemblement National delegation in the Patriots for Europe (PfE) group, was one of the lawmakers condemning the process:
“This is theatre. Their definition of democracy is to be elected before a vote,” Joron denounced in a video on X, pointing out that Nathalie Loiseau had already announced her election the weekend before the ‘vote.’
The PfE tried to put forward another candidate for the post, Portuguese Chega MEP António Tânger Corrêa, but the die was already cast. Tânger Corrêa denounced the “sham democracy” at work in the European Parliament, which is controlled by the European People’s Party (EPP), the Socialists (S&D), and the centrists (Renew), who, as usual, divide up the posts among themselves and exclude representatives of other groups deemed undesirable.
Recently challenged by French Conservative MEP Marion Maréchal over her links with the European Council for International Relations (ECFR), which is partly funded by American-Hungarian billionaire George Soros, Nathalie Loiseau says she is “proud to exert her influence within one of the best think-tanks in Europe” and assumes her new responsibilities without viewing it as a conflict of interest.
The committee she now chairs will be chasing foreign interference—but probably not that of Soros.
