On a mild Brussels morning, inside the halls of the European Parliament, a group of politicians, legal scholars, and policy skeptics gathered to talk about a piece of legislation most Europeans haven’t read, but which may soon be quietly reshaping how they speak, share, and think online.
Yesterday’s event, hosted by MEPs Stephen Bartulica and Virginie Joron, with support from ADF International, focused on the increasingly controversial Digital Services Act (DSA), a law initially sold as a digital shield against misinformation and tech giant abuse, but which critics now say has evolved into something more aggressive.
The conference title “The Digital Services Act and Threats to Freedom of Expression” tells you everything you need to know about the mood in the room.
Virginie Joron, a French MEP, opened the event with a direct shot at what she sees as the DSA’s unspoken evolution. “What was sold as the Digital Services Act is increasingly functioning as a Digital Surveillance Act,” she said. Her argument: a law intended to protect rights is now being used by institutions to regulate dissent on platforms like Facebook, Telegram, and X.
Many have previously tried to dismiss this as anti-Brussels paranoia. But even the US State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, & Labour has flagged the DSA’s “chilling implications” for open debate in Europe.
The devil, as always, lives in the definitions. Who decides what’s “disinformation”? What counts as “hate speech”? How far can governments go in flagging and removing content that someone, somewhere, considers problematic?
Paul Coleman, the Executive Director of ADF International, doesn’t seem particularly reassured by the current answers. “Free speech is again under threat on this continent in a way it hasn’t been since the nightmare of Europe’s authoritarian regimes just a few decades ago,” he told the room.
Coleman sees the DSA not as a minor technical tweak to the way platforms moderate content, but as a structural shift in how speech is treated under European law. “The internet is the frontline of this assault on free speech in Europe, particularly through the Digital Services Act,” he said. He also questioned whether the law can even be squared with existing human rights obligations. He said it was his “strong view” that “it is not”.
Stephen Bartulica, a Croatian MEP, took aim at what he sees as the DSA’s most dangerous feature: the vague and politically elastic nature of “hate speech.” In his view, the category has become so malleable that it could plausibly stretch to include something as basic as quoting religious scripture, depending entirely on the prevailing ideological winds.
He wasn’t being hypothetical.
One of the central cases highlighted at the event was that of Finnish MP Päivi Räsänen. In 2019, she posted a Bible verse and expressed her Christian views on sexuality. Since then, she’s faced criminal prosecution for alleged “hate speech, ”and even after being acquitted twice, her case is now heading to Finland’s Supreme Court.
“Six years ago, Päivi posted a picture of a Bible verse… She was criminally prosecuted… and has been unanimously acquitted in two trials,” Coleman explained. “But the state prosecutor has appealed the case again…she faces trial for posting online.”
To the attendees, her case offered a cautionary tale: that laws designed to rein in online hate can easily be stretched to silence political or religious speech, depending on who’s interpreting the rules.
One of the under-discussed aspects of the DSA is how it allows enforcement in one country to spill into others. If a post is flagged in one member state, that judgment can ripple across the EU. “If it’s considered illegal in one place, it could be in every place,” Coleman warned.
It’s a subtle shift with major implications. A court ruling in Helsinki could, in theory, affect content moderation decisions in Lisbon or Warsaw. The borderless internet meets a borderless enforcement regime.
Rod Dreher laid the charge bare: JD Vance doesn’t hate Europe; he hates the suits running it into the digital equivalent of East Berlin. “Of course” Vance doesn’t hate Europe, Dreher told the crowd, “he loves it enough to speak the truth about its censorship crisis.” A rather diplomatic way of saying that sometimes, a friend has to tell you you have spinach stuck in your teeth, or when your continental regulatory machine is veering uncomfortably close to ideological groupthink.
Dreher didn’t stop at pleasantries. He made it clear that what Vance opposes isn’t Europe itself, but the censorial ruling class propped up by the very institutions now portraying themselves as guardians of freedom.
According to Dreher, elites are less interested in addressing widespread dissatisfaction than in banning the words people use to express it. “Elites would prefer to suppress discussion of discontent and its sources,” he said, labeling such discussion “hate speech” whenever it threatens to puncture the grand illusion of managed progress.
He wasn’t quoting think-tank PowerPoints or EU strategy papers. He turned to Soviet dissidents, the people who wrote about living under regimes that made speech a privilege instead of a right. In today’s version, Dreher warned, the West is dressing up censorship in soft language, selling it as protection rather than punishment. His advice: don’t participate in the charade. “Refuse to participate in any event where one cannot speak the truth… Prepare to suffer for the truth.”
While Dreher offered the philosophical grounding, Paul Coleman came up with the legal blueprint. He dissected the DSA, clause by clause, right down to its compatibility (or lack thereof) with Europe’s own founding charters.
“It is thankfully the case that freedom of expression is guaranteed in Article 11 of the EU Charter, Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, and Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,” he said. But those guarantees aren’t decorative. They come with a condition: any limit on speech has to be necessary, proportionate, and justified in a democratic society.
He outlined real steps to challenge the law. “Member states could initiate an action for annulment before the Court of Justice of the European Union,” Coleman said, a legal process that could strike down the DSA in whole or in part if it’s found to clash with the EU Charter or foundational treaties.
Then there’s the DSA’s mandatory review, coming in mid-November, which he called a critical moment for resistance. “It is imperative that every opportunity is taken… to raise concerns about the censorial impact of the DSA,” he said. He urged lawmakers to submit questions to the European Commission, publicly challenge the legislation, and demand that Commissioner Henna Virkkunen answer for the law she champions. “After all, if the Commissioner is as in favor of freedom of expression as she claims to be, why would she refuse?”
It was a challenge dressed in diplomacy, but the undertone was unmistakable.
Coleman also stressed the importance of bringing civil society, digital rights groups, and tech companies into the room, not just for show, but because they understand the terrain better than the bureaucrats drawing the map. “They can share their invaluable expertise on this important issue,” he said, turning the usual technocratic lip service into a direct appeal for collaboration.
But perhaps his most important message was aimed at the people in the room, and those they represent.
“As elected representatives of your people, you are also in an excellent position to bring the public’s attention to the grave risks to free speech posed by the DSA,” he said. “The truth is that every single European’s rights are jeopardized by this legislation.”
The threat, as he framed it, is already working its way through legal systems and social platforms. And unless enough people start asking uncomfortable questions, it will become a normalized policy.
“The more the public is aware of and speaks out about this,” Coleman concluded, “the more pressure the Commission will feel. And the more likely we are to defeat this law.”
The event was never going to immediately change the minds of Brussels’ most dedicated speech regulators, the ones who believe liberty is a PR term and not a principle. But it did something arguably more important: it forced the discussion into the open, in plain terms, and without the usual euphemisms.
There were voices from across borders and political traditions, not saying “be careful,” but saying “pay attention.”
As Bartulica, Dreher, and Coleman made clear, the only thing standing between a managed internet and a free one is whether anyone still has the courage to call censorship by its name.
