Discontent has reached the middle class and therefore the pillar of the national economy. The artillery in Brussels is getting heavier. The Digital Service Act establishes new authorities and a modern spying system to combat unwanted information. “Hate speech”, whatever that means, will now be an “EU crime”. This division of society will cost member states several million euros to implement and will completely overburden the authorities: in Germany alone, the Federal Criminal Police Office expects 720.000 suspicious cases per year, compared to 6.000 so far. All this does not interest the European institutions. They continue to put themselves at the service of the technostructure and its lobbying interests. Because the pretext control of the technostructure can only work with the tools of the technostructure, right?

It is now a model well known to all critical observers: “emergency situations” and “threat scenarios” proclaimed through elite networks are used by political decision-makers as a basis and justification for restrictive measures. and attacks on various freedom rights.

To control the sovereignty of interpretation, it is important to present such dangerous situations to political decision-makers (and to those who still want to become one). This is what happened, once again, at the World Economic Forum. The “Global Risk Report 2024” strongly warns of the greatest global risk – bad information.

Commission President Ursula von der Leyen caught this bullet during her speech in Davos:

“There will always be attempts at disinformation and misinformation intended to destabilize us. And we have never known as much as with Ukraine…Russia is not achieving its strategic objectives. It fails above all on the military level...Russia has also failed on the economic level. Sanctions have isolated its economy from modern technology and innovation. The country now depends on China. Finally, Russia has failed diplomatically. Finland joined NATO. It will soon be followed by Sweden. And Ukraine is closer than ever, on its way to the European Union. »

Flawless control

Let's leave aside the legitimate question of who is actually using disinformation. Let us instead turn to the question of why the global risk of disinformation cited by the World Economic Forum is so important for the EU.

The Commission is currently building its new super-authorities to ensure enforcement of the Digital Services Act (DSA). Last April, the European Center for Algorithmic Transparency (ECAT) was established in Seville to help the Commission and national authorities monitor compliance with the DSA. In particular, ECAT will carry out technical tests on algorithmic systems in order to understand how they work, as well as risk assessments linked to platforms and search engines. A cooperation agreement was signed for this purpose with the French center “PEReN” (Digital Regime Expertise Centre).

The European Commission is targeting “unwanted information” on the Internet and is introducing new state and supranational control bodies with essential powers to this end. To ensure the full (and timely) implementation of the DSA governance structure, Member States must designate their digital services coordinators and other national authorities responsible for ensuring compliance by 17 February 2024. It is therefore not surprising that a “risk situation” is required for lagging Member States to act. Indeed, according to the Commission's own information, only two Member States, Italy and Hungary, have to date validly designated their national authorities.

Collapse of justice

Germany is still working on the national implementation of the European Digital Services Act (DSA). The German Bundestag debated this issue for the first time on January 18. According to the federal government's bill, the Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur) will be responsible for monitoring providers and enforcing the DSA.

In this context, the details that we do not like to talk about publicly are always interesting, and these are the implementation costs: thus, in Germany, the annual costs (!) for the Federal Network Agency are estimated at at least minus 17 million euros (personnel costs, IT, material costs and others). For the federal administration, the annual execution cost increases by around 8 million euros, to which is added a one-off execution cost of around 2,1 million euros.

But that's not all. Anyone who looks at the detailed explanations will find what they are looking for. The German Federal Criminal Police Office expects a significant increase in annual costs of around 44 million euros and one-off costs of around 21 million euros. Indeed, the Federal Criminal Police Office must receive reports concerning suspected cases of punishable content on the Internet and transmit them to the competent criminal prosecution authorities. Due to the significant expansion of mediation services subject to due diligence obligations, the Federal Criminal Police Office expects an increase in annual processing cases from around 6 currently to around 000 (! ).

This is where the cost estimates end – wrongly, because to be correct the additional costs for the prosecution authorities and the judiciary would also have to be calculated. If only part of the estimated 720.000 suspicious cases are prosecuted, German justice risks definitively collapsing. It has in fact been chronically overloaded for years and the number of untreated procedures has reached a record level.

Division of the company

However, the European institutions are not interested in the question of whether and how Member States can bear the costs of implementing the DAS. Nor are they interested in the capacity of law enforcement agencies to process the enormous number of new cases.

On the contrary, only last week the European Parliament made a new step forward in this area: the Council should take a decision by the end of the current legislature to include hate speech and hate crimes among the offenses referred to in Article 83(1) TFEU (referred to as “EU crimes”). The right to freedom of expression must not be used as a shield for the business model of social media platforms aimed at disseminating and amplifying hate speech, those around MEPs said.

The division of society by European institutions continues. Already, the “trusted reporters” provided for in Article 22 of the DSA, that is to say informants who monitor communications on online platforms and who intervene as soon as they suspect an infringement, are being formed. We know that some of them are part of the International Fact Checking Network (IFCN), a network which is itself affiliated with the Poynter Institute. Its funders include – among others – the Democracy Fund, the Lumina Foundation for Education, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the Omidyar Network Fund and the Open Society Foundations (OSF).

It cannot be warned and strongly emphasized enough: the EU elites have made the Brussels institutions auxiliaries of the interests of the technostructure. Because what they want to sell us as “control” of the technostructure, they can only achieve with the tools of the technostructure. Member States are overstretching their capacities and resources by implementing this policy – ​​this is particularly true for judicial authorities. But when state power erodes and society divides, great misfortunes are brewing in Europe.

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