The EU is a far bigger threat to democracy than Musk

Elon Musk’s increasingly strident tweeting about European politics has caused serious alarm in Brussels and in national capitals across the continent. In recent months, the X owner has demanded the overthrow of UK prime minister Keir Starmer, endorsed the AfD’s Alice Weidel for German chancellor, agreed with hard-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders, backed anti-immigration rallies in Ireland, bemoaned migrant crime rates in Spain, all while gleefully throwing mud at various EU officials.

Many in the EU have blasted Musk’s missives as a form of dangerous ‘foreign interference’. They are especially worried it could give a boost to populist parties in upcoming elections, particularly Germany’s federal election next month. MEPs have urged the European Commission to enforce the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) more strictly against Musk, which could involve X paying fines of many millions of euros. Last week, Politico reported that 150 EU officials would be monitoring Musk’s livestreamed interview with Weidel, the right-wing AfD’s chancellor candidate, for breaches of the DSA. The German Bundestag is also investigating the livestream as the AfD’s opponents claim it could constitute an ‘illegal party donation’.

One European bigwig wants Brussels to go even further. When asked on French television last week how best to respond to Musk’s meddling, former EU commissioner Thierry Breton offered a jaw-dropping ‘solution’: ‘We did it in Romania and we will obviously do it in Germany if necessary.’ What Breton was referring to was last month’s outrageous cancellation of the Romanian presidential elections. When it became apparent that the ‘wrong’ candidate – an oddball, Putin-supporting, anti-vaccine populist – had won the first-round vote, the Romanian Supreme Court intervened to declare his victory null and void. Presumably, Breton would like to see the same thing happen in Germany in the event of an AfD victory in February. If the election doesn’t go the EU’s way, in other words, then it should be cancelled.

Breton has since claimed that this is not what he meant. When Musk hit out on X, to brand Breton ‘the tyrant of Europe’, Breton immediately accused Musk of spreading ‘fake news’. He said the EU had neither the power nor the desire to cancel democratic elections. He insisted he was merely calling for the rule of law to be applied and for the DSA’s powers to be utilised fully.

In truth, the EU intervening when democracy delivers the ‘wrong’ result is depressingly routine. Brussels may not have the legal power to openly cast election results aside, but it has often covertly overthrown governments that it sees as bothersome, and worked to overturn referendum results that challenge the EU’s rule.

Brussels’ meddling in national democracy was most egregious during the Euro crisis. In 2011, when Greek prime minister George Papandreou briefly flirted with opposing EU-mandated austerity measures, a coalition of Germany, France, the International Monetary Fund, the European Commission and the European Central Bank applied a mixture of behind-the-scenes pressure, financial blackmail and very public threats to have his government ousted. It was then replaced with an unelected, technocratic ‘government of national unity’, willing to accede to Brussels’ diktats. Later that year, Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi was thrown out of office and replaced with Mario Monti, an unelected EU apparatchik. Former US treasury secretary Timothy Geithner has since revealed he was approached by EU officials for help with ‘a scheme to try to force… Berlusconi out of power’ (Geithner insists the US refused to participate).

The UK’s Brexit referendum in 2016 was the first time in the EU’s history that a vote that went against Brussels wasn’t either ignored or re-run (although that wasn’t for want of trying on the part of elite Remainers). Ireland was twice forced to hold second, do-over referendums when voters defied the commissioners – first, following the Irish rejection of the Nice Treaty in 2001, then after their rejection of the Lisbon Treaty in 2008. The Lisbon Treaty was itself a repackaged version of the European Constitution, which had been rejected by the French and Dutch publics in referendums back in 2005. Even before those votes were held, Jean-Claude Juncker, the then head of the European Council, made it abundantly clear to Europeans that their views were irrelevant: ‘If it’s a Yes, we will say “on we go”, and if it’s a No, we will say “we continue”.’ Even after 55 per cent of French voters backed No, Juncker pretended that the outcome was somehow unclear. ‘I am still very much in doubt when I look at this very mixed response in France’, he said.

Today, the EU concentrates most of its meddling on Central and Eastern Europe. From 2017 onwards, Brussels began imposing various sanctions on Poland. Ostensibly, these were in response to reforms to the Polish judiciary, put forward by the then government, run by populists Law and Justice. In 2022, the EU withheld over €100 billion worth of funding that was earmarked for Poland’s post-lockdown economic recovery. Yet in December 2023, when Donald Tusk, former head of the European Council, became Polish prime minister, the funds were released practically overnight – even though the judicial reforms the EU said it was so concerned about remained intact. Viktor Orbán’s right-wing Hungarian government has similarly become a whipping boy of the EU. It is targeted by relentless financial sanctions and countless resolutions in the European Parliament, often over social and cultural issues.

None of this is to excuse Elon Musk’s relentless, crass and often clueless interventions into European politics. The growing political power of Silicon Valley platforms and their oligarch owners is certainly nothing to celebrate. But for the EU to suddenly fret over ‘foreign interference’ in European politics is grotesquely hypocritical. Brussels is plainly the far greater threat to democracy and national sovereignty. It’s not even close.

Fraser Myers is deputy editor at spiked and host of the spiked podcast. Follow him on X: @FraserMyers.