Europe’s free-speech crisis: hype or reality?
Partners:
‘In Britain and across Europe, free speech… is in retreat’ declared US Vice President JD Vance at the Munich Security Conference earlier this year. Vance warned that European failings on free speech and democracy are not down to Russia, China or any other external actors but a product of ‘the threat from within’. Perhaps surprisingly, liberal bible The Economist agreed, avowing that ‘Europe really does have a problem with free speech’ and ‘when states have too many powers over speech, sooner or later they will use them’.
Many will smart at a dressing down from the Trump White House, itself decried as an energetic foe of speech it dislikes. But there’s little doubt that throughout Europe, free speech is under pressure. Free speech is no longer a given virtue and is now the subject of bitter disputes: cancel culture, blasphemy laws, press regulations, online censorship and cultural boycotts. The firewalling of political ideas threatens the very freedoms that made Europe the font of thriving democracies. If the birthplace of ideas such as toleration, freedom of conscience and liberty itself is surrendering its freedom of speech, why is this and how can we address the crisis?
Some point to elite overreach, such as the EU’s censorious Digital Services Act, restricting the new online public square while activist institutions and NGOs also exert a chilling influence. Others lay the blame for restrictions at the door of elected national governments, whether populists enforcing authoritarian agendas or liberal administrations protecting minorities. Yet given technological advances provoke genuine fears over new challenges, from misinformation to hate, and the young and the vulnerable are thought to be particularly susceptible to harms and mental-health challenges, what are the arguments we need to uphold free speech?
Another source of concern is the increasing dominance of the courts, judiciaries and human-rights agendas that now appear to curtail rather than support free speech. Has the rule of lawyers had the unintended consequence of destroying confidence in the rule of law? Or might the problem sit less in the sphere of law and more in wider social and cultural shifts that leave many societies estranged from and even hostile to the principles of tolerance and all too eager to silence the other side?
To what extent do Europeans still believe in the principle that bad ideas are best defeated by better ones, not by bans? Can civil society organise to resist the bureaucratic silencing of debate? Do the courts have a role to play in defending speech? Will Europe’s digital censorship regime now replace American tech giants as arbiters of truth? How can those who value free speech ensure that Europe once again rediscovers the values of tolerance and free speech as the foundation of a democratic society?
