The EU is manufacturing misinformation

A new report reveals how Brussels has spent €649million waging a propaganda war on free speech in the name of fighting 'disinformation' and 'hate speech'.

As Keir Starmer brings us ever closer to the EU, we must be vigilant about what exactly the EU’s priorities are in 2025. One key area of concern must be its headlong embrace of censorship. Under the guise of tackling misinformation and hate speech, the European Commission has now gone further than many of the individual member states or even the dangerous policies associated with the UK’s policing of speech via the egregious Online Safety Act.

In this context, we are delighted that the author of an important new report, Manufacturing Misinformation: the EU-funded propaganda war against free speech, has written an essay for us, explaining what is at stake. Norman Lewis issues a warning shot about these illiberal trends on the continent, which we should all heed and share widely.

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MCC Brussels has released a significant new report, Manufacturing Misinformation: the EU-funded propaganda war against free speech, exposing a covert campaign by the European Commission to shape public discourse in the name of combatting ‘hate speech’ and ‘disinformation’. The report reveals that nearly €650million has been spent on 349 projects run by NGOs and universities to promote safe online environments, effectively institutionalising a censorship regime with little accountability.

Triggered by the political shocks of Brexit and Donald Trump’s election, the EU Commission launched a campaign to reassert control over Europe’s political narrative. Central to this is the rhetoric of ‘hate speech’ and ‘disinformation’, framed as threats to democratic stability. The Commission presents these programmes as public-interest research initiatives, but they constitute a form of soft authoritarianism, enshrining speech codes and narrowing acceptable opinion through bureaucratic manipulation. This is a top-down, authoritarian, curated consensus where expression is free only when it speaks the language of compliance established by the Commission.

The Digital Services Act (DSA), which should be relabelled as the ‘Digital Surveillance Act’, is the crown jewel of this strategy. The legal framework enables the EU to regulate online speech under the guise of protection.

The MCC Brussels report underlines a disturbing fact: the Commission spends 31 per cent more on narrative control than on research addressing cancer, despite cancer causing nearly two million deaths annually in Europe. This prioritisation signals that Brussels fears the cancer of free speech more than the disease. Public funds are being funnelled unaccountably into a disinformation narrative designed to shape, limit and manage the terms of public debate.

Many of these initiatives feature a distinct use of vague and euphemistic terminology, part of what the report calls ‘NEUspeak’ – a deliberate linguistic strategy designed to obscure intent and pre-empt scrutiny. Project acronyms like FAST LISA and VIGILANT – which sound like digital voice assistants or wellness apps – are deliberate, dishonest strategic terms chosen to disguise a real authoritarian purpose. VIGILANT, described by its designers as ethical and user-centric, is, on examination, an AI surveillance suite aimed at monitoring, classifying and profiling speech, users and networks, which takes the complexity out of controlling freedom of expression.

Particularly disingenuous are programmes targeting young people. These are presented as civic education, but function more like behavioural grooming. The ‘capacity building’ they all pay lip service to is, in fact, the indoctrination of young people to behave and act as speech police. What appears to be bottom-up reform is, in fact, a pre-scripted system of narrative compliance.

The report stresses that while the financial misallocation should be exposed, the control over speech is the most critical point to highlight. Language is not neutral; it defines the limits of what can be said and what can be thought. When institutions control language, they control dissent.

This report is an exercise in democratic vigilance: if the terrain of public speech is manipulated, so is the scope of democratic resistance and alternatives.

In 2024, MCC Brussels published my report, Controlling the Narrative, which laid the groundwork for this analysis by detailing the EU’s censorship mechanisms. Manufacturing Misinformation further identifies what it terms the ‘Ministry for Narrative Control’. This informal apparatus sustains the EU’s broadest attempt yet to govern political language.

Projects led by universities, civil-society groups and research organisations are at the heart of this narrative machine. These actors, funded by EU grants, recycle and reinforce assumptions that justify further funding and control. The result is a self-reinforcing loop: ‘hate speech’ and ‘disinformation’ are declared problems, researched, confirmed and then cited to justify new projects.

This framework is not questioned in the mainstream. In debates, media and policy documents, the language of the Commission prevails. The DSA encapsulates this. While marketed as a digital-safety and user-protection tool, its proper function is more insidious. The Commission obscures its role as an ideological actor by redefining platforms like Facebook and TikTok as ‘services’. This subtle shift repositions users from citizens to data-producing end-users, speech from a right to a conditional service under contract, and dissent as a risk factor.

The DSA does not silence critics directly. Instead, it incentivises platforms to do so pre-emptively, making silence the default. The Commission thereby avoids direct responsibility while engineering the conditions for censorship through proxies. Speech is managed not through overt bans but through a chilling effect fostered by vague terms like ‘systemic risk’ or ‘illegal content’, which are never clearly defined.

Language is the EU Ministry for Narrative Control’s software infrastructure of control. When the EU Commission defines hate speech, disinformation or extremism, it does not identify problems; rather, it draws the lines around what can be said, by whom, and with what consequences.

These practices do not outlaw populism, but they do degrade it linguistically. Populist or ‘far right’ expressions are framed as security risks or psychological threats. They are fact-checked, shadow-banned or bundled into content-moderation protocols. This is not democracy. This is discourse management, where dissent is treated as pollution and filtered accordingly.

The attempt to dictate the narrative should not be understood as a conspiracy. The Commission is not promoting hate speech or disinformation. It targets free speech – specifically, its unpredictability – and the idea that ordinary people still retain moral independence when deciding what truth or lies are for themselves. Free speech, which assumes moral autonomy, allows for challenges and alternatives for the unsanctioned. It is this energy the EU seeks to neutralise.

The EU’s Ministry for Narrative Control is not a formal institution but a discursive infrastructure backed by billions. It remakes language in the image of compliance. Surveillance becomes ‘safety’. Censorship becomes ‘moderation’. Dissent becomes ‘harm’.

Manufacturing misinformation is not about protecting society from dangerous ideas but about insulating a ruling ideology from democratic challenge. The Commission rebrands inquiry as a confirmation ritual rather than any honest pursuit of truth. A society that redefines surveillance as ‘safety’ and censorship as ‘content moderation’ does not need to silence citizens outright; it simply changes the meaning of their silence.

This new censorship does not come with jackboots. It comes with policies, research papers and grants. It is not enforced with force but with euphemism. It works not by banning speech but by redefining the terms of legitimacy.

But this is its weakness. The need to constantly manufacture an artificial consensus reveals this narrative has no organic connection to the social reality it purports to reflect. It is a top-down conceit, sustained to legitimise the status quo that millions of Europeans are now questioning and speaking out against. €649million is a lot of money to hide the fact that the Commission can only rule through negative authority and manipulation; indeed, it has no clothes.

Dr Norman Lewis is visiting research fellow at MCC Brussels. Read his Substack, What a Piece of Work is Man!