Europe Is Discovering That Democracy Is Part of Its Strategic Strength

Europe has spent the past year trying to become harder to pressure. The European Union is strengthening its defence industry, reducing strategic dependencies, protecting its technological base and searching for ways to make its economy more competitive in a world where economic power, political stability and security can no longer be treated as separate questions. But as Europe searches for new sources of strength, an older question is becoming harder to avoid: can the EU become more competitive by weakening the very institutions that make it resilient?

The question has acquired new urgency over the past two weeks. On 7 July, the European Economic and Social Committee warned in Sofia that Europe must not sacrifice its values in the name of competitiveness. The discussion focused on the pressure created by disinformation, foreign interference, populism and declining trust in democratic institutions, as well as the growing temptation to treat social protections and democratic safeguards as obstacles to economic performance. Since then, the debate has moved from a civil-society seminar into the centre of the EU's institutional agenda.

The EU's Democratic Problem Is Becoming a Security Problem

On 9 July, the European Parliament's Special Committee on the European Democracy Shield adopted proposals calling for stronger tools against foreign interference, hybrid threats and disinformation. Its recommendations include greater protection for free and independent media, measures against online electoral interference and a fully fledged European centre for democratic resilience with a legal mandate and dedicated funding. The committee identified russia as the primary external threat, alongside activity from Belarus, China, Iran and North Korea. The proposals reflect a broader shift in the way European institutions are beginning to understand democracy: not simply as a set of principles to be protected, but as a capability that must be actively defended.

The European Commission's annual Rule of Law Report, published on 17 July, made a similar connection from a different direction. Independent justice systems, anti-corruption frameworks, pluralistic media and institutional checks and balances are presented not only as democratic safeguards, but also as conditions for public trust, security, investment, competitiveness and economic growth. The logic is increasingly difficult to ignore: a state in which the rule of law is unreliable is not only less democratic. It is also less predictable for citizens, businesses and investors.

The message emerging across European institutions is therefore becoming clearer. Democracy is no longer being discussed only as something Europe has a moral obligation to protect. It is increasingly being treated as part of the infrastructure of European power — alongside secure supply chains, defence capabilities, technological capacity and economic resilience.

The Information War Is Also a War Over Trust

That shift matters because the EU's current political debate is dominated by a language of urgency. Europe must act faster, reduce unnecessary bureaucracy, compete with the United States and China, develop its own technologies and strengthen its ability to protect itself. All of these pressures are real. The danger lies in assuming that democratic accountability is simply another obstacle to speed.

The European Parliament's work on the Democracy Shield suggests that the opposite may be true. The EU's response to foreign interference is increasingly built around the idea that resilience cannot be produced by governments alone. It requires independent media, civil society, citizens capable of evaluating information and institutions that can withstand political pressure. The Democracy Shield is therefore not only a security project. It is an attempt to answer a more fundamental problem: how can democratic societies defend themselves when the attack is aimed not at their territory, but at their ability to agree on what is real?

The information environment has become one of Europe's strategic vulnerabilities because foreign interference campaigns do not need to persuade every citizen to support a particular political position. They can be effective simply by making trust impossible. If citizens no longer believe journalists, public institutions, elections or fact-checkers, the political system becomes easier to destabilise. This is why distrust cannot be solved through information campaigns alone. At the EESC seminar in Sofia, participants stressed that citizens who feel unheard and excluded from political decision-making become more vulnerable to polarisation and manipulation. Media literacy matters, but it cannot replace trust in institutions.

Europe Cannot Fight Disinformation Without Addressing Discontent

This is where Europe's democratic problem becomes an economic one. A citizen who believes that political institutions are incapable of responding to real concerns is more likely to view democratic procedures as empty. The reasons may have little to do with foreign propaganda: housing costs, insecurity, stagnant incomes, declining public services or the sense that decisions are made by institutions too distant to influence. Disinformation can exploit these frustrations precisely because they are real.

That makes democratic resilience dependent on more than the ability to identify fake content. It depends on whether European institutions can still demonstrate that politics produces results. The EU cannot ask citizens to resist manipulation while ignoring the conditions that make them distrustful in the first place. If democratic systems are to withstand external interference, they must also remain capable of responding to the internal pressures that create political alienation.

This is also why the competitiveness debate cannot be separated from the social model. Europe does need a more productive and dynamic economy, but a model in which competitiveness is achieved by weakening the social protections that sustain public trust could ultimately create the instability that undermines competitiveness in the first place. The 2026 Rule of Law Report makes a similar argument in institutional terms: legal certainty, independent courts and effective checks and balances are not presented as barriers to economic growth, but as part of the conditions that make investment and stable economic activity possible.

Technology Is Becoming Part of the Democratic Infrastructure

The same logic applies to technology. Europe's search for technological sovereignty is increasingly linked to the question of who controls the infrastructure of public debate. The EU's Democracy Shield includes measures to protect the information space, strengthen media and electoral resilience and improve societal resilience and media literacy. The Commission has also supported independent fact-checking across the EU through a €5 million grant under the Shield.

The point is not that every digital platform is a geopolitical threat. It is that the systems through which Europeans receive information are no longer politically neutral environments. Algorithms determine visibility, platforms influence the speed at which narratives spread and artificial intelligence lowers the cost of producing convincing manipulative content. Political campaigns, foreign actors and commercial platforms all operate within the same information space, creating a democratic question that is increasingly also a question of infrastructure: who controls the information environment, who can influence it and who is accountable when it is manipulated?

Europe has begun to develop answers, but its institutional response is still catching up with the speed of technological change. That is why the latest developments around the Democracy Shield are significant. The European Parliament's committee is calling for binding tools, stronger sanctions, greater platform accountability and a dedicated institutional capacity for democratic resilience, while the Commission is linking the protection of democracy to the rule of law and economic competitiveness.

Europe's Next Test Is Whether It Can Become Stronger Without Becoming Harder

The direction of travel is becoming visible. Europe is moving away from the idea that democracy can be defended through occasional election-security measures or public warnings about disinformation. The emerging model is broader: democratic resilience as a permanent capability involving governments, courts, media organisations, technology companies, civil society and citizens.

This is also where the debate becomes politically uncomfortable. A resilient democracy cannot simply mean a society that is better at resisting foreign influence. It must also be a society in which citizens have genuine reasons to trust institutions. The EU cannot ask Europeans to defend democratic systems while treating their concerns as irrational or their distrust as merely the product of hostile propaganda. Nor can it protect democracy by turning every disagreement into a security threat. The challenge is to distinguish between political conflict, legitimate criticism and deliberate manipulation without allowing the fight against interference to become an excuse for restricting democratic debate.

That balance will become increasingly important as Europe builds its new security architecture. The EU is being forced to become more strategic, to make decisions faster and to defend its interests more aggressively. But the central question is whether it can become more capable without becoming less accountable. The European project was never designed for the world that now exists, but the answer to a more dangerous geopolitical environment cannot be to abandon the political principles that made European cooperation possible in the first place.

The EESC's warning from Sofia therefore looks increasingly less like a defence of abstract values and more like a strategic proposition. Undermining democracy will not make Europe more competitive. A weakened judiciary does not create more legal certainty; a weaker media environment does not create more informed citizens; a marginalised civil society does not create more social stability; and a population that no longer trusts institutions is not necessarily more willing to accept difficult reforms.

Europe's strength will increasingly depend on whether it can hold these tensions together. It must become faster without becoming less accountable, more competitive without dismantling the social foundations of stability, more technologically sovereign without allowing new forms of concentrated power to escape democratic scrutiny, and more secure without treating democratic disagreement as a threat.

That is a difficult political project, but the alternative is more straightforward — and more dangerous. Europe can become more efficient by reducing the space for disagreement, more secure by concentrating more power and more competitive by weakening protections. It may even become stronger in the short term. But it would also become less resilient.

The lesson emerging from the EU's latest debate over democracy is that European values are not a luxury to be defended once the more urgent problems have been solved. They are part of the capacity to solve those problems. The European Union is entering a period in which it will have to defend itself more actively than it has for decades. The question is not whether it can afford to protect democracy while pursuing that goal.

The question is whether it can afford not to.

Sources: European Economic and Social Committee, European Parliament, European Commission