Debate: Unpacking the Democracy Shield: Promise and Pitfalls

While the Democracy Shield promises to strengthen democratic processes and protect against disinformation, our panel examined some of its potential shortcomings.

On 3 December, we gathered representatives from across the Slovak media and policymaking circles to discuss our report Democracies at War. War on Democracies using four scenarios to test how Europe can defend the public sphere from disinformation, hybrid attacks and opaque algorithms.

Beata Balogova, former editor-in-chief of SME, highlighted that treating disinformation as something journalists must fix on their own misdiagnoses the problem and lets political actors avoid responsibility.

Hanna Shelest, director of security programmes at Ukrainian Prism, stressed the difference between classic total defence (mainly a government responsibility) and national resilience, which also covers individual preparedness, agencies, companies and local institutions.

The key takeaway from the discussion was that democracy defence cannot stop at mass communication from Brussels: Europe needs clear, time-appropriate and flexible rules for platforms, independent regulators and real backing for independent media and civil society in countries like Slovakia, where disinformation sites flourish and around 50 per cent of the public do not see Russia as a threat. To the report -> https://visegradinsight.eu/eu-values-foresight/.

This discussion was a part of the European Commission’s Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values (CERV) programmes and involved a Visegrad Insight-led three-year engagement across Central and Eastern Europe: https://visegradinsight.eu/eu-values-foresight/.

Photos: Jakub Kovalík