Senior Research Fellow, Freedom & Sovereignty Initiative Europe.
London,
Joined February 2007
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Spot on @tonygilland
The EU’s “rule of law” is a weapon against countries that stand up for their sovereignty and culture.
@tonygilland on Brussels, Donald Tusk and the battle for Poland’s future, speaking to @NewCultureForum.
George Orwell couldn’t have made this up.
SPAIN’S ELECTION PLANNED WITH BIG TECH BEHIND CLOSED DOORS - WE DEMAND TRANSPARENCY
Spain’s regulator for digital services, the CNMC, has held a closed-door meeting with Google, Meta, Pinterest, Snapchat, TikTok, Wikimedia and X to prepare for Spain’s general election on 29 November. The European Commission backed the meeting. Spain’s electoral authorities attended, along with civil society organisations and academics whose names have not been made public.
According to the CNMC, the meeting was meant to set up channels and protocols for cooperation between the authorities and the platforms if ‘serious incidents’ occur during the campaign. The legal basis is the EU’s Digital Services Act, which requires the largest platforms to limit ‘systemic risks’ to elections.
George Orwell has been resurrected in Spain. Democracy in the coming election is being protected from behind closed doors. Spain’s regulator, the European Commission, Big Tech and unnamed ‘civil society’ organisations, all of them unelected and unaccountable, are discussing electoral safeguards without publishing any of the measures they propose.
In the EU today, the public gets a ballot, while unelected guardians get a private meeting about the information surrounding it. This is managed democracy. Citizens keep the right to vote, while their freedom to judge competing arguments becomes a ‘risk’ for their guardians to manage.
Spanish voters do not know which organisations were in the room or what role they will play during the campaign. They do not know what counts as a ‘serious incident’, or who decides when the protocols are triggered.
The Democracy Interference Observatory has therefore filed access requests with both the European Commission and the CNMC. We have asked for the list of participants, the minutes, the platforms’ election plans, correspondence between the Commission and the CNMC, and any protocols agreed.
We call on the Commission and the CNMC to publish the list of participants before polling day. Elections belong to voters, not to regulators and platforms.
democrata.es/en/economy/goog…
This is what free elections mean in the EU: the unelected EU Commission is free to decide what voters can see and say during an election.
Spain votes on 29 November. Before it does, the EU Commission, Spain’s regulator, Big Tech and NGOs are meeting behind closed doors to coordinate the management of online “risks”.
Spain is applying the EU model for controlling an election: control what you can see and say before you vote.
democrata.es/en/economy/goog…
Excellent! by @RichardJSchenk
Warsaw’s judicial coup and why Brussels doesn’t care nazionefuturarivista.it/2026…
Really worth watching this. Developments in Poland are extremely worrying and important.
Is Poland seeing an EU-backed constitutional coup? What does it mean for the country’s democracy?
@jerzKwasniewski of @OrdoIuris joins @RichardJSchenk to explain the crisis, President Nawrocki’s response and the European Commission’s role.
Watch the full conversation.
Britain’s technocrats have rediscovered sovereignty: after a cabinet meeting, a strategy day and seven principles, they have established that government ought to serve the British people. It is like putting toddlers in charge of the nursery and watching them issue a National Playtime Strategy while squabbling over the toy cupboard. With responsibility for AI split between departments, ministers now propose to direct the technological future. The really ingenious discovery, however, is that 'democratic control' can mean giving the state more control. The people may be sovereign, provided they leave sovereignty to the experts.
‘Control and sovereignty’ to shape UK approach to AI giftarticle.ft.com/giftartic… via @financialtimes
Really good common sense!!
"They need adults to say 'no that isn't true' and everything about this bill means that would no longer be possible"
Lucy Beney of @ThoughtfulTs W/@janmacvarish of the @SpeechUnion @ #BattleFest 2026 "Conversion Practices Bill: Criminalising parents, teachers and priests?"
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Excellent!
Our @MaximumCities kicks off Battle of Ideas Helsinki
“We need to all be free to express opinions not everybody agrees with… This is an invitation to ask difficult questions rather than to be preached to from the stage”
@Suomalaisuus
Spot on!
You can cancel an election and ban the winner from running (Romania), you can ban your opponents from ever running again (Hungary), you can threaten to ban the main opposition party and subject it to relentless investigations by the secret police (Germany), you can threaten a ban on the leading presidential candidate and make them wear an ankle monitor (France), every member of your circle can be investigated for corruption (Spain), you can try and cancel local elections because you will lose them (Britain), and you can storm the constitutional court with riot police because you want to control it (Poland).
You can just do all these things. The secret is you just have to be on the right side of the European Commission.
Excellent, shows that reviving Britain’s economy is beyond the managerial mindset that has dominated Westminster since the late 1980s. This managerial approach shies away from fixing problems and instead tries to keep them in check. We are in serious dudu.
When the nation is on the precipice, doing nothing is not the same as ‘doing no harm’.
spiked-online.com/2026/10/29…
I really enjoyed this debate.
BREXIT is back!
Get ahead of Burnham’s government by watching “Don’t look back! Escaping the EU’s economic doom loop” @ #BattleFest 2026 in partnership with @GBBC_UK
W/ @CeeMacBee, @DavidGHFrost, @AliMirajUK, @TerraOrBust & @Norm_Lewis
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m.youtube.com/watch?v=asbD0g…
Norman Lewis retweeted
Scanning the messages of every citizen might be the definition of a police state. But that is exactly what the EU wants to do under its proposed ‘Chat Control 2.0’ bill. This is a brazen attack on free speech and privacy, says Adina Portaru
buff.ly/0qGm9Jz
Norman Lewis retweeted
A German NGO Flagged Romanian Content During Romania’s Elections
Democracy Reporting International took part in the Rapid Response System in Romania. Flags and flaggers remain secret. DRI says it didn’t flag journalists in 2025. So who did?
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Excerpt: "Democracy Reporting International, a German NGO that has received funding from the EU, the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the U.S. Department of State, has flagged Romanian content during Romania’s elections.
Did Democracy Reporting International flag journalists?
According to them, no — but that’s just what they told me. At some point, only discovery through judicial proceedings will settle the question. Unless the Commission and the Irish Digital Services Coordinator decide it’s time to enforce the DSA and provide the full transparency we need regarding flagging. My Article 53 complaint is on their desks.
As you know if you follow my reporting, in Romania, my X account was suspended, the Facebook page of the Romanian edition of Le Monde diplomatique was suspended for two years and reinstated without explanation, and some TikTok content from the Romanian edition of Le Monde diplomatique has been completely shadow-banned.
Platforms have also suspended accounts and content, and demoted people and outlets such as Ion Cristoiu, Robert Turcescu, Marius Tucă, Victor Roncea, Active News, Vlad Mercori, Andrei Murgescu and Laurențiu Țîrcă. These are only the cases around the 2025 RRS activation — and nobody can tell us whether the moderation was “RRS-related” or not."
Full article: francezul.substack.com/p/a-g…
cc: @DemocracyR @EDMO_EUI @eurofactcheck @EU_Commission @CNaM_ie @ANCOM_RO
Norman Lewis retweeted
On the 70th anniversary of the Hungarian revolution of 1956, our Freedom Breakfast celebrated the great courage of those who stood for national independence and political freedom.
Thanks to our speakers @Furedibyte @DariaMalecpl and Márton Veisz of our hosts @CivicHungaryFdn
Excellent! When revolt had a civilisational purpose
Today it costs little to speak out.
But the Hungarian heroes of 1956, inspired by Polish heroes of Poznań 1956, risked it all.
@DariaMalecpl reflected that courage is built on the idea that a struggle will have an outcome not just for ourselves but for future generations.
You’re free to hug your granny in Israel.
Has Ireland reached peak woke?
Your granny’s hug is now a consent issue.
That was the message of a Department of Justice-funded NGO ad in Ireland, until the minister had to pull it.
A state that funds this has stopped trusting its own families.
thejournal.ie/grandparents-h…
For centuries, the dodo has been Exhibit A in the prosecution of mankind. Now human ingenuity is challenging the apparent finality of its extinction, exposing the poverty of an environmental imagination that can picture us destroying the world but never repairing it. Perhaps ‘dead as a dodo’ will yet become the epitaph for environmental misanthropy itself.
Extinction Isn’t What It Used to Be normanlewis.substack.com/p/e…
Norman Lewis retweeted
In the news, our launch was covered by the Financial Times
ft.com/content/1cda1563-9f99…