European Union defensive democracy’s responses to disinformation

Abstract

ABSTRACT Disinformation has become a central topic in the European Union (EU) since the mid-2010s due to the disinformation campaigns used by the Russian Federation during the hybrid war against Ukraine in 2014, the Brexit referendum, the 2017 French presidential election and the 2019 European Parliamentary (EP) election. This paper aims to provide an overview and analysis of the EU’s counter-disinformation policy and measures within the theoretical framework of militant and defensive democracy with the aim to fill the gap in the relevant literature. The paper hypothesises that the concepts of militant and defensive democracy are applicable to the EU in its fight against foreign interference and disinformation. The main research questions are: What kind of measures has the EU developed to counter disinformation? Can we identify rights restrictive measures, in other words, does the EU follow a militant strategy in defending its democratic order? The paper finds that democratic self-defence is a crucial contemporary issue for the EU regarding foreign interference and more specifically disinformation, and that the concepts of militant and defensive democracy provide appropriate theoretical framework for analysing not only the challenges of democracy emerging inside the EU, but threats from the outside as well.