Opinion | On Europe’s Struggle to Govern Truth
For decades, the European Union (EU) has been seen as a regulatory superpower. In 2020, Anu Bradford coined the term “Brussels Effect” to demonstrate how the promulgation of the EU’s rules and regulations shapes policy worldwide. Yet this legacy is under pressure. In 2025, it is unclear if the EU can protect this image, and most importantly, this power.
Disinformation and misinformation have revealed gaps in the EU’s ability to regulate the space where democracy now lives: the flow of information. As political polarization intensifies, the question of whether the EU can still act as a beacon of press freedom, especially in light of recent media shutdowns and democratic backsliding in the United States, no longer has an obvious answer.
This tension became especially visible at the “State of Europe: Media, mistrust, polarization puzzle” conference I attended this past October in Brussels, where policymakers, journalists, and citizens confronted the very dilemmas now shaping Europe’s information landscape. In a number of European countries, many do not feel they are free to say what they want; in Hungary, this proportion reaches 32 per cent and in France, 38 per cent, according to a Pew Research Center study. The discussion at the event helped me grasp the shortcomings of the EU’s regulatory approach in the face of social media’s dominance as the main source of news.
Europe is stuck in a contradiction: it wants its citizens to retain their full rights of expression, but its political fragility, fostered by media polarization, is undermining that ideal. Citizens feel ignored and underprotected as Brussels is accused of not acting fast enough. The Brexit campaign is one clear example of its inability to detect and act against mass disinformation. Distrust has become embedded in the European information landscape. At the conference, only about half the room raised their hands when asked if they trusted the media. With generative AI and fake news on the rise, citizens are becoming more aware of how easily they can be manipulated. Yet, the irony lies in their own inability to do anything about it. Reliable media is not cheap. One participant seemed particularly furious about the The Economist subscription, currently billed at $31.90 CAD per month. Even if people want to be well-informed, they don’t always have the means to do so. Instead, many turn to state-funded mass media, which, as some suggested, has become a perpetuator of cheap propaganda in many European countries. This is just one of many issues.
The modern-media era has created a fog of information–a profit-seeking and politicized environment where citizens don’t know what to believe anymore. Algorithms have the power to decide what we know and what we believe. On top of this, our overconsumption of information rarely helps us get a clearer picture of what’s true and false. Instead, the psychological phenomenon of “motivated reasoning” proves that we are more apt to process, retain, and believe the facts that align with our pre-existing identities. With visibility constrained by polarizing headlines, citizens increasingly fail to notice the truth and instead retain only the most direct facts, which enclose them in their own information bubble. As those bubbles interact, polarization intensifies, and the media, instead of fulfilling its primary goal of fostering a stronger link between current events and people, alienates them from reality. Information becomes abundant yet less meaningful, and public debate fractures accordingly.
A recent survey by Debating Europe, presented by one of the panellists, demonstrated that, among young Europeans, social media and media are believed to be, respectively, the second and third most responsible actors for polarization. Yet a central puzzle emerged: how much media freedom is enough to enrich debate without tearing society apart?
Even when Brussels recognizes that more regulation is necessary, the political context is often too volatile to allow full enforcement. In such cases, the EU loses the power to protect its standards. National governments are sensitive to public backlash, with the EU’s regulatory pressure risking being framed as transgressing sovereignty and opposing democratic values. Legitimate rulings can be seen as censorship, further fueling distrust towards European institutions. The debate at the event centred around Slovakia’s public service broadcasting bill, approved by the President in June 2024 despite its breach of the European Media Freedom Act (EMFA). The bill largely politicizes the media by centralizing control over it. Under the EMFA, the EU should have imposed greater legal safeguards against media capture. Yet it failed to intervene strongly enough. The situation was described as “too politically delicate,” as officials believed that a real enforcement of rules risked increasing pro-Russia sentiment by worsening public opinion on EU interference. As a result, after Slovakia’s parliament passed the bill, the country saw one of the sharpest declines in the rule of law according to the World Justice Project 2025 Index. If the force of regulation remains dependent on political context, Europe’s ideals, such as freedom of expression, are bound to collapse.
What can Brussels do? Regulation alone appears ill-suited to counter the speed and adaptability of modern media capture, unless states recognize the need for a greater innovative approach. A more durable response may lie in strengthening citizens’ capacity to critically engage with information. Finland’s long-standing emphasis on media literacy within its national education curriculum demonstrates how democratic resilience can be cultivated without expanding state control over content. By prioritizing critical thinking over censorship, such an approach protects freedom of expression while addressing the root causes of disinformation. Ultimately, the discussion returned to its starting point as we argued about the extent to which the media should be free and opinionated. I was especially interested in the argument that by not exposing and analyzing Agenda 47 (Donald Trump’s campaign manifesto published pre-election) clearly enough, the American media passed on an opportunity to contribute to the larger democratization of the presidential debate among citizens. It is still undeniable that a healthy democracy relies on fact-based debate. Yet, unlike in the ancient Athenian Agora, in today’s politicized environment, unbiased information is increasingly difficult to find.
I left Brussels with the impression that, while Europe’s media crisis might be deeper than I had imagined, the Union does have the expertise and the tools to fight it—it just needs more enforcement. Social media, while constantly blamed for eroding trust, can also be the space where trust is rebuilt. Algorithms that accelerate disinformation can be reoriented to elevate credible sources. Platforms that reward noise can be transformed to amplify connection rather than polarization.
If Europe still wishes to be a regulatory superpower, it will need to turn its focus to the democratization of information just as it once did with data protection. 99 per cent of people don’t openly wish to be polarized—they just don’t yet have the ability not to be. If Europe can engage rather than divide its polity, media freedom may yet become not a fading legacy of the past, but a renewed promise for the future.
Edited by Idan Miller
Featured Image: European Parliament building in Strasbourg, France, the official seat where the Parliament holds its plenary sessions. Photo by Frederic Köberl is licensed under the Unsplash License.
