Dear members of the press,
A majority in the European Parliament is concerned about propaganda against the EU by third parties and pushes for a resolution to counteract this.
A resolution against negative propaganda about the EU by third parties, ladies and gentlemen of the press, it a next step towards censorship of the press, of social media, of journalists.
Let me ask you this: who decides what is propaganda against the EU?
The answer is: the EU itself by means of institutes like EU vs Disinfo.
The European Commission already spoke with representatives of Facebook and other social media to pressure them. The Commission wants these big social media platforms to immediately remove content that is negative towards the EU and its policies.
And as a result we already see critical voices being banned from Facebook and Twitter, people who have nothing to do with foreign countries, no Russian trolls or bots. Just ordinary people who speak out against mass migration, against an EU super state or against the violent crimes by migrants.
In a society with a free press, it must be possible to criticize the government, the governing institutions and policies without fear of being censored or worse.
So, while this resolution seems to aim at third countries like Russia who might try to destabilize the EU, it de facto aims at EU-critical political parties, EU-critical media outlets and EU-critical individuals, jounalists, bloggers, tweeps.
We are therefore, at an incredibly high pace marching towards a sovjet like super state, where dissenting opinions are forbidden.
The timing of this resolution is no coincidence. We are two and a half month away from the elections for the European Parliament. And you all will be very much aware of the growing popularity of EU-critical parties.
These parties, like ours, see the impotence of the EU to deal with essential issues like the debt crises, the migration crisis, terrorism in our cities, youth unemployment and economic growth.
The EU is not the cause of prosperity and peace as it likes to present itself. Instead, non-EU-countries are often performing better on economic growth. EU-countries that close their borders are not suffering from terrorist attacks.
This is the inconvenient truth the EU would like to cover up. I express my deepest concerns about the direction the EU is heading with this resolution.
In a normal situation, a government would let the free press do their job, accept the criticism and would change its course as a result of it. Instead, the EU chooses to use its power to silence the press and push its desastrous agenda.
And let me state this very clear: the European Commission has no legal mandate to restrict the freedom of expression. Nowhere in the Treaty, we find an article that permits the Commission to establish an institute that monitors the media and that bans inconvenient opinions. Such measures by the Commission are completely illegal.
Therefore, our group will vote against this resolution and propose an alternative text pressing for protection of the freedom of the press and a level playing field for all political, philosophical and religious beliefs, which are based upon the equality of all human beings.