They call it progress. They call it simplification.
I call it a systemic capitulation to the centralizers.
For years, the EU waved the GDPR flag as the global gold standard for citizen privacy. Now? They’re quietly eroding it with one hand while trying to boost ‘European AI’ with the other. The cognitive dissonance is deafening.
The pattern is clear: Economic ambition requires data; data requires oversight; oversight requires the state to compromise your encryption. This is how you build a panopticon economy. Give regulators more rope, and they will always use it to hang a new, centralized system.
Centralization: The Unseen Regulator#
Every new initiative tightens the knot. It’s not about making life easier; it’s about making control easier.
The move to make a digital driving license standard across the entire EU by 2030 is not a technical convenience. It is the building block for a mandatory, unified Digital Identity Wallet.
- This creates a single point of failure for the entire continent.
- It centralizes highly sensitive identity data.
- It makes pan-European state tracking trivial.
Of course, the EU wants to simplify GDPR to give AI more data. This isn’t simplification. This is regulatory burnout giving way to industrial lobbying. You cannot have both: a tough privacy law and a massive AI data pipeline. The choice is being made for you.
The End-to-End Encryption Tax#
The relentless pursuit of ‘chat control’ is the clearest sign that the EU does not fundamentally respect digital civil liberties.
Every few months, a new proposal surfaces, often disguised as CSAM protection. It’s regulatory whack-a-mole:
- Denmark tried to push it through. It was scrapped.
- Then a ’toned-down’ proposal gained EU country support.
The goal is unchanged: Client-Side Scanning. Your device becomes the state’s spy. It’s a technical absurdity that fundamentally breaks modern communication security.
WhatsApp and Threema were right: this undermines end-to-end encryption. Yes, I made the same mistake, I believed regulators would respect basic cryptography. Twice.
If the EU successfully forces backdoors, it’s not just bad actors who lose privacy. Everyone loses security. Operational neglect disguised as compliance.
The AI Act: Compliance Over Resilience#
The AI Act was supposed to be the great firewall against bad algorithms. Now, the EU is considering weakening it, especially with calls for central supervision.
- Problem: The EU wants to invest heavily in European AI (defense and health).
- Solution: Relax rules and centralize oversight to favor state-backed or state-chosen players.
This is the productivity vs. security paradox in sharp focus. Economic productivity, building ‘European Champions’, is prioritized over systemic security. The focus shifts from preventing harm to managing it after the fact, under central state authority. Less Silicon Valley regulation, more Beijing with better PR.
The AP vs. The EU-Hof: Checkmate#
Even national privacy watchdogs run into the brick wall of EU centralization.
The AP and the tennis bond stopped their lawsuit after an EU Court of Justice (EU-Hof) ruling, a stark reminder of who holds the ultimate judicial lever. National data protection authorities are now structurally subordinate to a central court.
The AP’s call for stricter rules for government enforcement research using public sources illustrates the same mechanism. They seek guardrails because the state’s monitoring power has already expanded.
Sharp Conclusion#
The pattern is not subtle. The EU is building a centrally-controlled digital infrastructure: unified ID, state-sponsored AI, and persistent legal mechanisms to break encryption. This is technological authoritarianism, China’s governance model in a softer, democratic-sounding package.
Lessons#
- Mandatory ID is a Trap: Oppose all unified digital ID schemes. Convenience comes at the cost of control.
- Encryption is Non-Negotiable: Laws that compromise end-to-end encryption, regardless of the emotional appeal, must be blocked. Don’t let government neglect become your security problem.
- Stay Vigilant: Centralized EU systems are coming. The only realistic defense is awareness, advocacy, and careful use of optional privacy-preserving tools.