The EU plot to crush free speech in Ireland

The European Commission in Brussels threatened to bring legal proceedings against Ireland last week. The Commission is demanding Ireland impose draconian restrictions on the right of its people to speak their minds. Yes, you read that right: according to the EU, Ireland has too much free speech.

The problem, as the EU sees it, is ‘hate speech’. In 2008, the EU hammered out a ‘framework decision’ on xenophobia, which requires all member states to forbid incitement to violence or hatred on the basis of race, religion or nationality. It also criminalises Holocaust denial, or ‘trivialisation’ of the Holocaust and other crimes against humanity.

Ireland, however, has not complied with the 2008 diktat. It hardly needed to, since it has had hate-speech laws of its own since 1989, which nearly go as far as what Brussels is demanding anyway. These laws ban speech likely to stir up hatred on grounds of race, religion, sexual orientation or membership of the Traveller community. Last year, the Irish government even imposed a new law that increases the length of prison sentences for crimes that are proven to be motivated by ‘hatred’ on the basis of any of those characteristics.

Yet according to the EU, none of this is good enough. In a communiqué released on 7 May, the Commission gave Ireland two months to enact the EU’s provisions on incitement to violence and Holocaust denial. If Ireland fails to do this, it faces punitive fines and a date at the European Court of Justice.

This threat should worry anyone who cares about free speech and democracy. For one thing, the laws demanded by the EU are a frontal attack on vital aspects of free speech. Of course Holocaust denial is appallingly offensive. It’s also very stupid, since there is no respectable argument that the Holocaust didn’t happen. But criminalising it is not the answer. Offensiveness doesn’t justify dragging people through the courts for what they say.

It should also be abundantly clear that censorship of this sort does more harm than good. If you muzzle Holocaust deniers, you risk turning them into self-declared ‘free-speech martyrs’ and cause their readers to wonder whether they might have a point. Far better to point out to these head-bangers that they are blindly contradicting the irrefutable evidence and show them up for the idiots they are.

The Commission’s threat is also a direct assault on Irish democracy. Brussels is telling an elected Irish government to pass a law that its parliament has already rejected. In 2023, the Irish government introduced a hate-crime bill including provisions that would have done what the EU is now demanding. When it appeared that many senators (not to mention free-speech groups, Elon Musk and much of the public) were deeply unhappy with the bill’s restrictions on free speech, the worst clauses were taken out and the bill passed without them.

What happens now is uncertain. It may be that the progressive establishment – which in Ireland, has a way of wangling what it wants – will manage to ram a censorship bill through parliament on the pretext that the Irish must be good Europeans. But it is also conceivable that rebellious senators, such as Rónán Mullen, will hold their ground against an authoritarian, undemocratic EU. Let’s hope they do.

Meanwhile, those of us living in the UK should be grateful. But for Brexit we would be in the same boat, with our liberties facing the same external threat. Just as in Ireland, our own already draconian hate-speech laws would be getting even more draconian. Maybe it’s time Ireland considered leaving the EU, too.

Andrew Tettenborn is a professor of commercial law and a former Cambridge admissions officer.