The ongoing investigation by the EU Commission into potential influence from Elon Musk’s platform X on the German Bundestag elections raises fundamental questions about the sovereignty of national democracies and the role of supranational actors in the political processes of member states. The Digital Services Act (DSA), now being used as a tool to ensure the “integrity of elections,” grants EU bureaucrats an unprecedented ability to intervene in the election processes and public discourse of member states.
This raises the critical question of how the EU can maintain the fundamental principle of national sovereignty and the self-determination of voters if it is granted the authority to monitor and regulate electoral interference in countries like Germany. If Brussels acts as a guardian of electoral integrity, the framework for European cooperation once envisioned by the founders of the EU could become a tool of political control, potentially threatening the independence of individual states.
Expanding the DSA’s scope to include “election integrity” could create a dangerous tension between the legitimate need for protection against manipulation and the interference with national democracies. It begs the question of whether safeguarding democratic principles within member states should truly rest in the hands of supranational institutions capable of exerting potentially far-reaching influence over national elections. The balance between protecting public discourse and preserving the political autonomy of states will ultimately determine how free EU member states truly remain.