Commission President von der Leyen said in her State of the Union speech: “Democracy in Europe is under attack and our society as a whole is in serious danger”. She is not wrong. The EU faces hybrid warfare and autocratic forces that seek to replace freedom with dictatorship. We should not kid ourselves: without peace, freedom, democracy, and the rule of law, there can be no unity, competitiveness, or innovation. The Commission now needs to prove these are not just words and transform them into actions.
Co-authored by: Omri Preiss, Axel Dauchez, Sophie Pornschlegel, and Daniela Vancic
As the European Commission prepares to publish the Democracy Shield proposal, it must be sure that it has real and meaningful ambition, with matching resources to ensure real-world impact. Crucially, if Europe wants to be competitive in the world, it must make democracy competitive.
Ursula von der Leyen recognised the urgency, and proposed a new Centre for Democracy Resilience. Depending on how it is set up, that could be a great new push with new momentum to streamline and focus efforts, and rapidly funnel resources to the right places, or it risks becoming a regurgitation of past efforts, an empty title and another sinkhole of fragmented effort. To be successful, the new Centre must support and scale up impactful efforts, and put new resources on the table, making the pie bigger for democratic resilience.
So, after committing to an urgent effort and a new centre, the EU must put its money where its mouth is. It needs to fund sweeping whole-of-society action and resilience against foreign information manipulation and interference, and invest in technology that protects and revitalizes democracy.
Funding democracy for the future
In practice, this means that the EU must allocate an equivalent of 10% of the increase in defence spending on democratic resilience. The EU Democracy Shield funding should be made up of Member State programmes, European bonds, and European budget earmarking. This should include democracy resilience priorities across programmes, avoiding fragmented bureaucratic silos, and a strategic impact-focused and simplified deployment of funds.
If this sounds like a lot of money, that’s because there is in fact a lot to do. What should the EU invest in? In the short term the Democracy Shield should fund efforts to counter the daily attacks on its information space. In the medium and long term it should build a more robust digital society, with new innovative business models, sovereign European digital systems, media literacy, and wider citizen participation.
This new Centre needs to connect the dots, and channel funds to amplify efforts to make our democracy more resilient and participatory, counter information manipulation and interference, and hybrid attacks on European democracy, including through support bringing together civil society, media, innovative intelligence, digital platforms and research for strategic action. Whatever happens, it must not reinvent the wheel, and repeat work already done, but scale up existing solutions. That should include ensuring robust uncompromising enforcement for EU law. This would go a long way towards cutting off influence operations by hostile foreign actors like the Russian government or China.
President von der Leyen and her colleagues, Prime Ministers and Presidents of the European Union countries have a date with history - they will determine whether Europe will choose to invest in a future of freedom, democracy, innovation and sustainable prosperity, or whether it will be subjugated as a tech-colony by tyrannical powers. This is the choice at hand.
President von der Leyen and her colleagues must step up and make sure the Democracy Shield provides the investment needed, and put the EU’s money where her mouth is.
Signatories:
Omri Preiss, Managing Director, Alliance4Europe
Axel Dauchez, President of Make.org and co-founder of the Worldwide Alliance for AI and Democracy
Sophie Pornschlegel, Policy Fellow, Das Progressive Zentrum
Daniela Vancic, Policy & Advocacy Lead, Democracy International
