A new report has uncovered an expansive and quietly orchestrated campaign by the European Commission to shape public discourse through nearly €649 ($735M) million in taxpayer-funded projects aimed at regulating online speech.
Titled Manufacturing Misinformation: The EU-Funded Propaganda War Against Free Speech, the document was released by the think tank MCC Brussels and authored by Dr. Norman Lewis, a seasoned analyst of digital communication and regulatory policy.
Behind the EU’s frequent calls to combat “hate speech” and “disinformation” lies what the report describes as a vast ideological infrastructure designed to erode free expression under the guise of safety and civic empowerment.
The Commission, the report states, “has funded hundreds of unaccountable non-governmental organizations and universities to carry out 349 projects related to countering ‘hate speech’ and ‘disinformation’ to the tune of almost €650 million.”
That staggering figure surpasses what Brussels spends on transnational cancer research by over 30%, a discrepancy the report calls deliberate: “The EU Commission regards stemming the cancer of free speech as more of a priority than the estimated 4.5 million new cancer cases and almost two million cancer deaths in Europe in 2022, for example.”
While EU officials present these programs as public-interest research, the report argues they constitute a form of “soft authoritarianism,” enshrining speech codes and narrowing acceptable opinion through bureaucratic manipulation. “This is a top-down, authoritarian, curated consensus,” it states, “where expression is free only when it speaks the language of compliance established by the Commission.”
Many of these initiatives feature a distinct use of vague and euphemistic terminology, part of what the report calls “NEUspeak;” a deliberate linguistic strategy designed to obscure intent and preempt scrutiny. The project acronyms alone, such as FAST LISA and VIGILANT, are described as a form of branding deceit.
As Dr. Lewis writes: “These chirpy acronyms don’t just sound like digital voice assistants or wellness apps…they are deliberate, dishonest strategic terms chosen to disguise a real authoritarian purpose.”
Some of the projects don’t only aim to influence the debate, they aim to automate it. AI-powered initiatives are being trained to identify and suppress politically undesirable speech in real-time.
One such project, VIGILANT, is described by its designers as ethical and user-centric, but MCC Brussels challenges this narrative. “VIGILANT is an AI surveillance suite aimed at monitoring, classifying, and profiling speech, users, and networks, which takes the complexity out of controlling freedom of expression.”
The report highlights that the EU’s censorship framework is not only technical, it is pedagogical.
Programs targeting young people are presented as civic education but function more like behavioral grooming. “The ‘capacity building’ is, in fact, the indoctrination of young people to behave and act as speech police,” the report explains. “What appears to be bottom-up reform is, in fact, a pre-scripted system of narrative compliance.”
Another cornerstone of the report is its critique of how taxpayer money is being funneled into what it calls pre-validated “research” meant to affirm political orthodoxy rather than challenge it.
“Research that systematically ‘proves’ this assumption is not research; it is the manufacturing of propaganda used to legitimize the narrative, pre-empt criticism, and thus delegitimize any ideas or narratives that do not conform.”
Far from defending democracy, MCC Brussels contends that the European Commission is subverting it.
“Language is the EU Ministry for Narrative Control’s software infrastructure of control,” the report warns. “When the EU Commission defines hate speech, disinformation or extremism, it is not identifying problems – it is drawing the lines around what can be said, by whom, and with what consequences.”
For Dr. Lewis and MCC Brussels, the takeaway is clear: this is not about protecting society from dangerous ideas, but about insulating a ruling ideology from democratic challenge.
“The Commission rebrands inquiry as a confirmation ritual rather than any honest pursuit of truth,” the report concludes. “A society that redefines surveillance as ‘safety’ or censorship as ‘content moderation’ does not need to silence citizens outright; it simply changes the meaning of their silence.”
