Foreign Affairs: The End of the Open Internet: How Europe Lost the Plot on Online Speech

By: Jacob Mchangama

At this year’s Munich Security Conference, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stressed Europe’s “long tradition in freedom of speech.” Then she drew a redline. “We are very clear with digital sovereignty . . . that what is forbidden offline is forbidden online,” she added.

Von der Leyen’s maxim would have sounded foreign to the continent’s leaders just over a decade ago. Inspired by the social media–led movements of the Arab Spring, liberal democracies treated Internet freedom as a geopolitical principle to be evangelized rather than a problem to be regulated. Since then, faith in the liberalizing potential of open access to the Internet has given way to a more technocratic focus on digital sovereignty, the idea that states must control their own data and infrastructure, as the organizing principle of European digital policy. The pivot has come as a response to the increasing dominance of American tech platforms, whose engagement-driven models have driven fears that they might be weaponized by hostile states and groups to spread propaganda and undermine democratic institutions. Since U.S. President Donald Trump’s reelection in 2024—and as Silicon Valley’s leaders have cozied up to an administration openly antagonistic toward Europe’s political establishment and supportive of the populists challenging it—European policymakers have increasingly felt the need to assert control over what Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has referred to as a “digital Wild West.”

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For European democracies, there is an alternative to top-down digital sovereignty. A more decentralized, interoperable and pro-social online ecosystem designed to bridge political and geographic divides rather than amplify them does not have to choose between democratic accountability and online safety. Governments concerned with both can protect user privacy and encourage crowd-sourced fact checking and transparent platform design that empowers users rather than the platforms themselves. They can enforce existing laws against fraud, incitement, and child exploitation without building a new censorship infrastructure. They can, in short, take the 2012 resolution at its word by protecting human rights online instead of extending government control into the digital public square.

 

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