Picture: CHRISTOPHE PETIT TESSON / KEYSTONE

The European Union has become a “monster” that increasingly undermines freedom and democracy – according to the criticism of the media scholar Norbert Bolz in a guest article for the newspaper Die Welt. The EU is no longer a community of free states, but a centralized “machine that constantly produces regulations and prohibitions” – and in doing so pursues a “scripture” reminiscent of Kafka and Orwell.

Bolz, professor emeritus and one of Germany’s most prominent conservative intellectuals, sees the original idea of a peaceful and economically united Europe perverted. What began with free trade and freedom of movement has been replaced by bureaucratization, intransparency and authoritarian tendencies. As a concrete example, he mentions the “Digital Services Act” and the planned chat control: “This is about methods of a totalitarian surveillance state that reads private communication and thus destroys privacy and freedom of expression.”

At the heart of his criticism is European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. For Bolz, she embodies the “cold German face of an accidental Europe”. It is particularly outrageous that she refuses to disclose her text messages exchanged with the Pfizer boss during the coronavirus pandemic.

The EU is not democratically legitimized. “There is no separation of powers and no democracy,” Bolz wrote. Rather, Brussels serves as a lever to enforce nationally unpopular measures – for example in the name of climate protection and corporate social responsibility. This practice makes it possible, in particular, to circumvent the political will of the own population.

Those who rebel against this development are not an anti-European, but a good European, according to Bolz