Unable to conceive of the digital world as a normal arena for political debate, European institutions treat it as a pathology that needs to be regulated. From the e-commerce directive to the Democracy Shield, regulation no longer organizes debate: it administers values, multiplies acronyms, and pre-frames what can still be discussed. This is a development with serious consequences for European democracies.
There was a time – not so long ago, but already folkloric – when the European Union regulated the digital world as one regulates a market: with general rules, a certain technical modesty, and an almost naive respect for legal clarity and freedom, contractual or otherwise. In 2000, the e-commerce directive established a framework. A framework, not a moral code.
Semantic shift
Twenty-five years later, Europe is no longer content to simply regulate activities: it protects, corrects, balances, supervises—and prides itself on civilizing. The semantic shift is revealing. After the General Data Protection Regulation, the founding act of a protective and normative Europe, came the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act. Soon to come are the Digital Fairness Act, the Cyber Security Act, the European Democracy Shield, and the Digital Networks Act. DSA, DMA, DFA, CSA, EDS, DNA: at this stage, acronyms are no longer a tool for clarity, but a promise of a bright future in three letters.
A regulation for every virtue
The most striking thing is not their proliferation, but their nature. We have moved from commerce to services, then to markets, then to fairness, then to content and democracy itself. The law no longer describes what it regulates: it announces what it intends to improve. Each text promises fewer rules than virtues. And, by a recurring administrative miracle, each virtue justifies a new regulation that is long, difficult to understand, the result of often dubious compromises, and which grants new powers to the Commission and administrative institutions. While the Commission tirelessly invokes « simplification, » the facts tell a different story: where the e-commerce directive was limited to 16 pages of the Official Journal of the European Union and 65 recitals to regulate comparable actors, the Digital Services Act spans 102 pages and 156 recitals, as if complexity had become the natural language of regulatory virtue. Published this week, the proposed Digital Networks Act takes regulatory inflation to such a level that the DSA seems almost restrained by comparison: 416 recitals and 250 pages of text, excluding annexes.
Extension of the scope of regulation
Under the guise of technicalities, the proposed Digital Networks Act perfectly embodies this change. Under the cover of connectivity, the text extends regulation far beyond telecommunications infrastructure. As pointed out by Mike Blanche pointed out, it is no longer just about networks, but about the organization—and supervision—of relationships between operators, content providers, software developers, AI players, equipment manufacturers, and device manufacturers. In other words, the bulk of the European digital ecosystem, under the watchful eye of the Commission and BEREC. « Ultimately, the DNA will define a regulatory straight jacket for Europe, where the innovation we seek is stifled by guidelines, monitoring, and dispute resolution, » he explains.
A vague shield
The European Democratic Shield proposal is undoubtedly the most successful illustration of this virtuous extension logic. Under the guise of protecting democracy against « interference » and « hybrid threats, » the definition of which remains deliberately vague, the project piles up funding, new structures, and expanded powers, with a future center for democratic resilience whose governance remains uncertain. Far from acting as a safeguard, Parliament itself is calling for more resources, more coordination, and greater operational power, including over national electoral processes. Here again, the vocabulary is revealing: there is no longer any mention of pluralism or democratic conflict, but rather of resilience, continuity, and threat. In this context, criticism, polarization, and protest become weak signals to be monitored rather than normal expressions of political debate. The shield does not eliminate democracy: it places it under permanent administrative protection, in the name of safeguarding it.
A well-established method
The method is now well established. We do not regulate head-on: we « guide. » We do not impose: we « ensure consistency. » We do not make decisions: we ensure that everything is « fair, reasonable, and proportionate. » Until the distinction between voluntary best practice and binding standards becomes purely theoretical, which is fortunate, since even theorists, elected officials, and lobbyists are now struggling to keep up.
Synthetic urgency
For this is one of the most tangible effects of this regulatory inflation: even specialists are losing touch. Reading a text has become a lifelong project. Analyzing it seriously is an investment. Assessing its legal quality—often mediocre in the end—takes time and money. A lot of time and a lot of money. But that time no longer exists. Texts pile up, overlap, and contradict each other, while Parliament and the Council adopt them at a rapid pace, often in the name of urgency, an urgency largely created by the previous pile-up.
And what about citizens?
And if even the specialists end up giving up, it is easy to imagine what happens to citizens: deprived of any clarity, they are reduced to consuming the language that the institutions are willing to provide them with (justice, security, democracy, « the end of the Wild West ») without ever being able to really discuss its content. However, a law that citizens cannot read or understand no longer structures a democratic space, but rather a relationship of guardianship. When texts become too long, too technical, too saturated with indisputable moral concepts, they cease to be objects of deliberation and become instruments of enlightened obedience. Citizens are no longer called upon to judge, let alone choose: they are invited to trust. Complexity is then no longer a simple flaw in the system, but a mode of government: it neutralizes disagreement, discourages criticism, and transforms democratic participation into passive adherence to the intentions proclaimed by the institution.
A pathology to be addressed
Finally, we must face up to an explanatory factor that has become impossible to ignore: digital technology is causing panic in the Brussels bubble. Unable to think of platforms as a space for discussion generating normal political debate, the European institutions treat it as a pathology to be controlled. Not because it is intrinsically dangerous, but because it inherently escapes the reassuring categories of law and administration. Faced with this elusive object, the reflex is always the same: dramatize, moralize, then regulate. The latest episode is almost a serious farce: the European Parliament’s request to ban social media for children under 16, presented as a quasi-toxic threat to mental health. The gesture is spectacular, the posture irreproachable, the virtue dazzling. So what if a recent study of 25,000 young people shows exactly the opposite? It doesn’t matter: when reality contradicts moral intuition, we regulate intuition. Or, as Thomas Sowell puts it: « Empirical evidence itself may be viewed as suspect, insofar as it is inconsistent with the dominant view. » In this regulatory theater, prohibition takes the place of analysis, and the protection of citizens serves mainly as an alibi to protect institutions from a digital world they do not control.
Controlling the future
This is where we can speak, without exaggeration, of a law of anticipated virtue: a law that is no longer content with setting rules, but defines in advance what is fair, balanced, and democratically desirable. The problem is not virtue. The problem is that once institutionalized, it becomes difficult to challenge without appearing suspicious. Who can seriously ask for less justice, less fairness, less protection? Hence the vague but persistent and, above all, uncomfortable impression that democracy is pre-framed. Debate remains possible, provided that the objectives already enshrined in law are not called into question. It is not that democracy is under threat. It is that it is already protected against what it could become.