The EU’s Surveillance Paradox: Criticising Authoritarianism While Practising It

The EU’s contradictory rhetoric about protecting digital freedoms and implementing total control tools raises doubts about Brussels’ commitment to democratic principles and indicates a shift towards governance methods that were previously criticized as authoritarian.

The question is not whether the European Union has become identical to the systems it criticises. The more important question is whether mechanisms traditionally associated with authoritarian governance are increasingly being normalised within democratic institutions under a different political vocabulary.

The Chat Control Mechanism

At the heart of this contradiction is the EU’s proposed regulation on combating child sexual abuse online, commonly referred to as “Chat Control 2.0.” The regulation requires digital messaging services—including WhatsApp, Messenger, and Signal—to scan all private messages, images, and links for potentially illegal content. While the stated objective is protecting children, the mechanism involves systematic, preventive monitoring of private communications.

The central concern is not only what the system is designed to detect, but also what kind of infrastructure it creates and how future governments may use it. Once such monitoring capabilities are established, their expansion to other purposes becomes a matter of policy, not technology. The significance of such systems lies not only in their immediate purpose but also in the precedent they establish. Once the technical capacity for systematic monitoring exists, future governments inherit an infrastructure that can be redirected without fundamentally changing its architecture. The political debate therefore shifts from whether surveillance should exist to what additional objectives should justify its use. This is precisely the mechanism that civil liberties advocates have warned about in other contexts.

What makes this particularly striking is the framing. When Russia introduced its own internet monitoring laws, the EU called it a “threat to freedom of expression.” When China expanded its surveillance apparatus, European officials spoke of “digital authoritarianism.” Yet the Chat Control regulation creates a form of preventive digital monitoring that raises questions previously associated with authoritarian surveillance models. The difference appears not to be in the method, but in the language used to justify it.

The New Language of Control

The defining characteristic of contemporary governance is not the disappearance of control, but its rebranding. Surveillance becomes child protection. Information management becomes the fight against disinformation. Restrictions become responsible governance. The vocabulary changes more rapidly than the mechanisms themselves. The evolution of political language has allowed contemporary systems of control to expand without presenting themselves as systems of control at all.

Russian and Chinese authorities generally present these measures as instruments of state security, social cohesion, or national stability. Whether one accepts those justifications or not, the objectives are stated openly. The........

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