Those who rule the European Union are increasingly following Orwell’s ‛1984’ as if it were their regime handbook. Free speech becomes ban on talking, peacefulness becomes fitness for war, and whistleblowers become snitchers, now actively recruited by the EU. Welcome to the Propper New World of autocrats. Be careful what you say or get outlawed!
Since 2000, the EU Commission has imposed sanctions on 4,270 individuals (last updated in January 2026 [1]), resulting in the freezing of all bank accounts and travel bans. For non-EU citizens living abroad who are considered important supporters of rogue states such as Russia, North Korea or Iran, these bans are at least consistent with the hostility expressed by the EU towards these countries. For ordinary European citizens living within or (in some cases, fortunately) outside the EU who question this hostility, the sanctions can become real fatwas or deportation to a kind of lonely gulag: not only are they barred from leaving the country where they currently stay, they also have no access to their finances, except perhaps for a monthly allowance of a few hundred euros. They become absolute outlaws, or ‘vogelfrei’ in German. Worse still, friends who want to help them privately run the risk of being added to the sanctions list themselves. All this can even happen to citizens of a non-EU European country if its government, such as Switzerland’s, does not have the guts to defy the judgement of the EU Fatwa.
Sanctioned, you simply do not exist
The EU sanctions against European individuals are much worse than banishment, where you would at least have the chance ot receive help from supporive people in your forced exile. And you have almost no chance to appeal against such sanctions, which are issued not by a court but as an administrative measure by the EU commission. Any appeal would require difficult legal steps and cost a lot of money to which, as said, sanctioned individuals do not have access and to which, as said, other people can contribute only at the risk of bein sanctioned as well.
But what did the sanctioned individuals actually do?
For example, you can end up on the sanction list for ‚actions undermining or threatening the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine‘. This category applies to 45% of all sanctioned individuals, including those who merely question the EU narrative, provide information from non-western sources or publish in Russian media. In other words: in Europe, you should no longer take your right to freedom of speech for granted.
A surveillance state due to a lack of democracy
It does not end here. On its ‚integrity line‘ website, the EU commission bluntly welcomes to its ‛Sanctions Whistleblower Tool’ [2]. Leyen & Co have no qualms about misusing the term we would use for a corageous person when they are calling for snitchers, the same way any dictatorial regime engages people to spy on others. The mullahs do it, Putin does it, Xi does it, Trump does it, Maduro did it — but when the permed blond-dyed German lady in Brussels does it, she is of course doing it for the good cause of European values and to secure democracy. Are you kidding?
It is time to turn the EU institutions upside down. The EU Commission, the de facto EU government, is cobbled together in negotiations between national governments and the Council of Ministers, the EU’s undemocratically elected but more powerful parliamentary chamber, while the publicly elected European Parliament can at best accept the package. If the European Union is to have a future in line with its much-vaunted values, its undemocratic institutions must be replaced and the Parliament must become its power of decision.
Sources:
[1] https://data.europa.eu/apps/eusanctionstracker/
[2] https://eusanctions.integrityline.com