On 15 December 2025, the European Union sanctioned Jacques Baud, a Swiss national and independent military analyst, accusing him of spreading “false narratives” on Ukraine and NATO. Officially framed as a safeguard for European democratic resilience, the move exposes a far more troubling reality: a censorship industrial complex in which independent analysis, alternative viewpoints, and rigorous debate are increasingly treated as a national security threat.
Across Europe, unelected bureaucrats in Brussels, supported by a sprawling network of state-aligned NGOs, now wield the power to monitor, flag, and remove content; define disinformation; and impose sanctions, often without meaningful judicial oversight. Laws like the Digital Services Act (DSA) compel platforms to remove or restrict content under threat of fines and give influence to “trusted flaggers,” many handpicked civil society organisations funded by the EU. The so-called trusted flagger status is granted by the Digital Services Coordinator (DSC) of the Member State where the applicant entity is established. DSCs manage the application process, and flaggers are handpicked and funded accordingly. You can review the list of DSA trusted flaggers here. Amongst these authorised flaggers, you can find the National Institute for Holocaust Studies in Romania, “Elie Wiesel” or e-Enfance in France, which just received 2 million euros ( yellow coins scandal) from Brigitte Macron. The level of independence remains questionable.
The Jacques Baud case is not an isolated incident. It exemplifies the systematic targeting of dissenting voices and underscores the urgent need to understand the mechanisms shaping Europe’s public discourse today.
France has emerged as the central architect of Europe’s censorship machinery. Domestically, laws such as the Pleven Law of 1972 created a legal framework empowering organisations to act as quasi-judicial arbiters of speech. Over decades, this system evolved into a bureaucratically and NGO-mediated enforcement ecosystem, blending government agencies, legal bodies, media regulators, and civil society organisations to exert preemptive narrative control over public debate and digital platforms. (more...)
Mapping Censorship: France’s Empire of Silence Across Europe and Beyond
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