European Parliament hammers Commission over anti-Kremlin ‘Democracy Shield’

BRUSSELS — European Parliament members this week rubbished the EU executive’s Democracy Shield plan, an initiative aimed at bolstering the bloc’s defenses against Russian sabotage, election meddling and cyber and disinformation campaigns.

The Commission’s plan “feels more like a European neighborhood watch group chat,” Kim van Sparrentak, a Dutch member of the Greens group, told a committee meeting on Monday evening.

On Tuesday, EU Justice Commissioner Michael McGrath faced the brunt of that censure before the full Parliament plenary, as centrist and left-leaning lawmakers panned the plan for its weaknesses and far-right members warned that Brussels is rolling out a propaganda machine of its own.

“We want to see more reform, more drive and more actions,” Swedish center-right lawmaker Tomas Tobé, who leads the Parliament’s report on the matter, told McGrath.

The European Democracy Shield was unveiled Nov. 12 as a response to Russia’s escalating meddling in the bloc. In past months, Europe has been awash in hybrid threats. Security services linked railway disruptions in Poland and the Baltics to Russian-linked saboteurs, while unexplained drone flyovers have crippled public services in Belgium and probed critical infrastructure sites across the Nordics.

At the same time, pro-Kremlin influence campaigns have promoted deepfake videos and fabricated scandals and divisive narratives ahead of elections in Moldova, Slovakia and across the EU, often using local intermediaries to mask their origins.  

Together these tactics inform a pressure campaign that European security officials say is designed to exhaust institutions, undermine trust and stretch Europe’s defenses. 

The Democracy Shield was a key pledge President Ursula von der Leyen made last year. But the actual strategy presented this month lacks teeth and concrete actions, and badly fails to meet the challenge, opponents said.

While “full of new ways to exchange information,” the strategy presents “no other truly new or effective proposals to actually take action,” said van Sparrentak, the Dutch Greens lawmaker. 

EU response a work in progress

Much of the Shield’s text consists of calls to support existing initiatives or proposed new ones to come later down the line.  

One of the pillars of the initiative, a Democratic Resilience Center that would pool information on hybrid warfare and interference, was announced by von der Leyen in September but became a major sticking point during the drafting of the Shield before its Nov. 12 unveiling. 

The final proposal for the Center lacks teeth, critics said. Instead of an independent agency, as the Parliament had wanted, it will be a forum for exchanging information, two Commission officials told POLITICO. 

The Center needs “a clear legal basis” and should be “independent” with “proper funding,” Tobé said Tuesday.  

Austrian liberal Helmut Brandstätter said in a comment to POLITICO that “some aspects of the center are already embedded in the EEAS [the EU’s diplomatic service] and other institutions. Instead of duplicating them, we should strive to consolidate and streamline our tools.”

EU countries also have to opt into participating in the center, creating a risk that national authorities neglect its work. 

Right blasts EU ‘censorship’ 

For right-wing and far-right forces, the Shield reflects what they see as EU censorship and meddling by Brussels in European national politics.  

“The stated goals of the Democracy Shield look good on paper but we all know that behind these noble goals, what you actually want is to build a political machinery without an electoral mandate,” said Csaba Dömötör, a Hungarian MEP from the far-right Patriots group.  

“You cannot appropriate the powers and competence of sovereign countries and create a tool which is going to allow you to have an influence on the decisions of elections” in individual EU countries, said Polish hard-right MEP Beata Szydło.  

Those arguments echo some of the criticisms by the United States’ MAGA movement of European social media regulation, which figures like Vice President JD Vance have previously compared to Soviet-era censorship laws. 

The Democracy Shield strategy includes attempts to support European media organizations and fact-checking to stem the flood of disinformation around political issues.

Romanian right-wing MEP Claudiu-Richard Târziu said her country’s 2024 presidential elections had been cancelled due to “an alleged foreign intervention” that remained unproven. 

“This Democracy Shield should not create a mechanism whereby other member states could go through what Romania experienced in 2024 — this is an attack against democracy — and eventually the voters will have zero confidence,” he said. 

In a closing statement on Tuesday at the plenary, Commissioner McGrath defended the Democracy Shield from its hard-right critics but did not respond to more specific criticisms of the proposal. 

“To those who question the Shield and who say it’s about censorship. What I say to you is that I and my colleagues in the European Commission will be the very first people to defend your right to level robust debate in a public forum,” he said.