Brussels Is Finishing Its Censorship Machine: Europe Has Until June 26 to Say No

On June 26, the European Commission closes a little-noticed consultation on “trusted flaggers” — the final component of a system for deciding what Europeans may say online. Its defects are not drafting accidents. They are built into the design.

On June 26, 2026, a consultation few Europeans have heard of will quietly close in Brussels. The European Commission is finalising its guidelines on “trusted flaggers” under Article 22 of the Digital Services Act (DSA) — privileged notifiers whose reports of allegedly illegal content platforms must handle first. It is the last bolt in a machine assembled patiently for years. Once it is tightened, the EU will possess a complete, legally armoured system for managing what Europeans may say, read and share online. Before that happens, it is worth naming precisely what is wrong with this construction — because its defects are not accidents of drafting. They are congenital.

Censorship by terms and conditions

The first defect is the privatisation of censorship. The DSA censors no one directly; that is its genius and its alibi. Instead, it tells platforms that once they have “actual knowledge” of illegal content they lose their liability shield, and it arms the Commission with fines on the largest platforms of up to six per cent of worldwide annual turnover. No rational company litigates the nuances of lawful speech under such a threat. It deletes on doubt. The state’s hands remain clean while the dirty work is done by terms and conditions — and over blocking of perfectly legal speech becomes not a bug but the business model of compliance. No one disputes that genuinely illegal content — terrorist propaganda, child sexual abuse material — must come down, and fast. The question is what else comes down with it.

The second defect is the rule of vagueness. Articles 34 and 35 of the DSA oblige the largest platforms to assess and mitigate “systemic risks”, including “negative effects on civic discourse and electoral processes”. No statute defines these phrases. No court has delimited them. The same European Commission that interprets them also enforces them — prosecutor, judge and legislator in one office. In any Member State, a speech regime built on such clauses would be struck down as unconstitutional; in Brussels it is called good governance.