From climate mandates to digital censorship and centralized control, the EU is steadily
expanding its power under the banner of “necessity,” undermining the very Western
values it claims to defend.
Trump has launched a direct challenge to the Brussels bureaucracy. Europe’s openborders policy, the growing pressure on free speech, economically damaging climate and energy policies, and the active obstruction of Ukrainian-Russian peace talks have all become major irritants for the American president. Beneath this confrontation lies an uncomfortable but unavoidable question: does the old continent still share the Western values the United States has always stood for — freedom, sovereignty, and democratic legitimacy?
Anyone who dares to say today that freedom in Europe is under pressure is immediately branded with a label: “extremist,” “anti-European,” “disinformation.” It is a familiar reflex — not to challenge the argument, but to discredit the speaker. And that alone should alarm everyone.
Because let’s be honest: the European Union is not moving toward more democracy, more freedom, or more sovereignty. Quite the opposite. What we are witnessing is a steady centralization of power, justified by fear, crisis, and moral self-righteousness. This is not a plot. It is a pattern.
Take the Green Deal. Under the leadership of Frans Timmermans, hundreds of billions of euros were mobilized to push through a single ideological project. Not through open debate. Not through national parliaments. But through Brussels-driven regulations, subsidies, and coercion. Carbon emissions became not just a measurement tool, but a tool of power. Whoever decides what you may drive, eat, heat, build, or produce ultimately decides how free you are. This has little to do with “saving the climate” and everything to do with behavioral control.
Then there is the Digital Services Act. Officially designed to combat “disinformation” and “hate speech.” In practice, it functions as a legally sanitized censorship regime. Not the state banning speech directly, but the state forcing platforms to remove it. No open prohibition, but silent exclusion — not only in the EU, but even globally. No debate, but algorithmic invisibility. The question of who gets to decide what is true is no longer even asked. That alone is dangerous.
The so-called Media Freedom Act fits the same pattern. Free press, we are told. Yet through subsidies, accreditation, and regulatory frameworks, authorities determine which outlets are “reliable” and which are not. Journalism that aligns with the approved narrative is rewarded; critical voices are marginalized. That is not press freedom, that is state-approved journalism.
And we have not even touched on the technocratic control mechanisms now being rolled out at high speed: a European digital identity, a potential central bank digital currency. Always sold as “convenient,” “efficient,” and “secure.” But the central question is never answered: what happens when access to money, services, or mobility becomes conditional on behavior and compliance? Freedom rarely disappears through force. It disappears through conditions.
Geopolitically, we see the same mechanism at work. The war in Ukraine is being used to spread fear and transfer more power to Brussels. In the EU defense remains a national competence, yet calls for a European army grow louder by the day. Not because it is necessary, but because crises are always used to force integration. A war economy is a bureaucrat’s dream: larger budgets, less dissent, and reduced parliamentary oversight.
Meanwhile, the real economy is being hollowed out. Small and medium-sized businesses are drowning in regulations, reporting obligations, and costs, while large corporations know exactly how to navigate and influence Brussels. This is not a free market. It is corporatism: profits for the few, burdens for the many, all directed from the center.
Some draw historical parallels and are quickly dismissed as hysterical. But anyone who takes history seriously knows that authoritarian systems rarely begin with overt repression. They begin with moral superiority, with “necessity,” with “there is no alternative.” With citizens expected to voluntarily submit to a higher purpose defined by the state.
That was the core of totalitarian thinking in the twentieth century. Not left or right, but anti-liberal. Anti-individual. And that mindset is once again gaining ground in Brussels.
So no, this is not Nazi Germany. But anyone claiming there is no reason for concern is either not paying attention, or deliberately looking away.
Freedom disappears step by step. Always legally. Always with good intentions. Until it is too late. And then people ask: why did no one speak up?
Trump has launched a direct challenge to this Brussels bureaucracy — and that challenge is justified. This is the moment for Europe to choose. Not for more power concentrated in Brussels, but for real democratic accountability. Not for technocratic coercion, but for freedom and responsibility. Not for fear and moral blackmail, but for open and honest debate. Not for a bureaucratic EU, but for a free Europe.
National parliaments must reclaim their authority. Citizens must once again be free to question, criticize, and refuse without being labeled or stigmatized. Europe can only be strong if it is free. And freedom does not require obedience — it requires courage. The courage to say “no” when power disguises itself as “necessity”.
Rob Roos is a distinguished fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington, DC-based think-and-do tank.
