Europe is at a crossroads. Due to the global threat to democracy and the current geopolitical shifts, fundamental decisions must be taken in the next legislative period of the future European Parliament and Commission to strengthen democracy and European integration and to fend off attacks from outside and within.
The Russian war of aggression against Ukraine is also directed against Europe: it is a hybrid war in which, alongside military weapons, the weapons of propaganda, fake news and the manipulation of public opinion are used. These weapons are primarily used in the digital space, which is extremely vulnerable despite the EU’s leading role in digital regulation. Disinformation is the biggest hybrid threat to democracies in Europe and European integration. While autocratic systems increasingly seal off their cyberspace, Europe offers the enemies of democracy one of the most vulnerable public spaces in the world.
The classic separation of external and internal security is not practicable in cyberspace due to the borderless nature of attacks. Europe must quickly find appropriate responses to this threat. In addition to increased efforts to protect against external and internal attacks, measures to strengthen trustworthy sources of information must be put in place.
For years, liberal democracy has been under threat worldwide. “Today, about 38 per cent of the world’s population lives in countries that are not free, the highest proportion since 1997, and only about 20 per cent live in free countries,” is how the American NGO Freedom House describes the global situation in 2023 in its latest Freedom of the World report.1
With democracy, freedom is also at risk. Liberal democracies are characterised by free elections, separation of powers, the rule of law, human and civil rights, and civil and political liberties, which are guaranteed by a constitution. Liberal democracies are deliberative democracies, borrowed from the Latin deliberatio, meaning consultation, consideration. The term emphasises that public discourse, public deliberation, the participation of citizens in public communication and the interaction of deliberation and the decision-making process are fundamental to a democracy.
The foundation for this is free access to trustworthy information for all citizens that creates a generally shared reality. On this basis, citizens must be able to form their opinions in free exchange, which only leads to free decisions and, therefore, democratically legitimised governments in free elections. Plato already recognised the vulnerability of the public to moods and manipulation as the weak point of Attic democracy, which he therefore wanted to replace with the rule of philosophers. With the emergence of the bourgeois public sphere since the Age of Enlightenment, the question of a free, independent, and diverse press became a prerequisite for democratic systems.
Digital structural change in the public sphere
Today, this public sphere is at the mercy of a few globally dominant Big Tech companies, whose algorithms initially direct and “personalise” the flow of information, i.e., decide who receives what information. With the triumph of generative artificial intelligence (AI) like ChatGPT, in addition to distribution even the production of information is also increasingly subject to the intransparent regime of market-dominating platforms.
After twenty years of digital disruption by search engines and social media, both public and privately financed quality journalism has become economically suppressed. The high costs of quality journalism cannot be covered in the same way in the digital world as before. Especially since today, over 59% of online advertising revenues worldwide go to two companies that do not employ a single journalist to check facts and generate news: Alphabet and Meta.2
Social media companies used to take no responsibility on their own initiative for the content they disseminate at all for over two decades. The first rules for organizational duty of care for the published content are only beginning to take effect through the European DSA and DMA regulations. But even today there is a big difference to quality media, which take responsibility for the accuracy of each individual article and compliance with all other legal provisions.
Social media, in contrast, can still be used to provide citizens with false reports. Mis- and disinformation can find their way and destroy public trust. In this situation, the hybrid information war that Russia is waging against Europe acts as an accelerant. The 2024 EU Parliament elections took place under the threat of misinformation and false information, and therefore, the rise in power of anti-democratic forces, which has never been greater in Europe since World War Two. But Europe has not only the opportunity but the duty to free itself from this self-inflicted digital dependency.
Own designing instead of mere regulation
Instead of always complaining about the market-dominating dominance of a few large platform companies and their often-negative contribution to the creation of the democratic process, it is time for Europe to shape the powerful technology of Artificial Intelligence according to its own core values and ideals and to put it into service of democracy and freedom. Today, software exercises significant power of opinion by deciding what we learn about the world, and that is why a European infrastructure is mandatory. In the age of digitization, a public service software infrastructure is needed that offers its own search and recommendation algorithms that do not lead into the narrowness of self-confirmation bubbles3 but into the breadth of the view for and of others must secure the basic prerequisites of an open society.
Above all, Europe can use digitalisation for its own purposes by developing and using AI-supported translation software that enables real-time translation into all European languages. Overcoming language barriers with the help of AI-based technology would be a historic step for Europe, and it is feasible as a study of the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) commissioned by the European Parliament showed last year.4 For the first time, communication can take place across language barriers throughout Europe. A European Pentecostal miracle of mutual understanding made possible by AI is in reach.
By developing trustworthy and robust translation technologies, Europe can, for the first time in history, overcome the language borders and create a one-lingual single market that enables huge new business models not only for media enterprises.
A European perspective for public and private quality media
Although the structural change in the media is also increasingly undermining their financing, Europe still has a strong media sector: Public Service Media alone receive 27 billion euros a year in fees from citizens within the EU in order to fulfil their mission to inform, educate and entertain.5 However, the resulting news and information programmes are only available in the national media bubbles. They are invisible throughout Europe. Also, the private offers in the media are mostly dressing national audiences.
This news and information programmes could be made accessible to all citizens in Europe at a stroke with a minimal investment in translation technology. This would abruptly increase the diversity of trustworthy media offerings and also improve mutual understanding between neighbours. A side effect is that this investment would create a single multilingual market of 500 million users, which would also open up unimagined new opportunities for private media. And – finally – a single European space would be created for the first time in which public affairs, the “res publica”, could be negotiated jointly among all Europeans. The small investment in this technology is a “low-hanging fruit” in view of the enormous positive effects for Europe. Everything needed for this already exists; it just needs to be made accessible.
If Hanna Arendt is right that the ability to take the perspective of the other is the beginning of the political, then Europe today has the historic opportunity to truly become politically capable. It can do so by establishing a news and information network of quality media providers that gives all citizens access to trustworthy information—and that in all 24 official European languages. Therefore, Sapere Aude, Europe, have the courage to free yourself from your self-inflicted digital immaturity.
