Europe’s Media Influence: Fazi Exposes EU’s Propaganda Network

The European Union’s growing reliance on propaganda to shore up legitimacy amid geopolitical challenges has come under scrutiny from Italian journalist and author Thomas Fazi, who argues the bloc has developed a sophisticated system to promote pro-EU narratives through strategic funding of civil society organizations.

In his latest book, “The European Propaganda Machine. The Dark Side of NGOs, Media and Universities,” Fazi meticulously documents how EU institutions channel hundreds of millions of euros annually to influence public opinion, particularly in member states with governments critical of the European project.

“The goal is to influence public opinion in member states, particularly in those where elected governments are more critical of the EU,” Fazi told Brussels Signal in a recent interview.

Born in 1981 and initially aligned with radical left-wing politics, Fazi’s perspective shifted dramatically following the 2008 financial crisis, leading him to view the EU as fundamentally flawed from its inception rather than a noble project gone astray.

“From its very beginnings in the 1950s, the European integration process was shaped by U.S. strategic interests aimed at building a unified Western bloc in an anti-Soviet context,” he argues, claiming the first European federalist committees received CIA funding.

According to Fazi, the EU’s institutional structure—dominated by the unelected European Commission with limited powers for the European Parliament—was deliberately designed to constrain democratic accountability. He maintains that true democracy remains tied to sovereign nation-states where citizens can develop a common national interest.

“There are too often no common interests,” Fazi explains. “The Union has expanded to include states with deeply divergent geopolitical interests—from Italy, historically inclined toward pragmatic relations with Russia, to the Baltic states, which for historical reasons strongly oppose Russia.”

This fundamental problem, he argues, has rendered the European project unreformable due to its embeddedness within the Atlantic geopolitical framework and what he describes as Europe’s mediocre leadership class. He points to European leaders’ reactions to former President Trump’s diplomatic initiatives as evidence of their inability to reassess strategic priorities independently.

Fazi’s research reveals an extensive propaganda operation that emerged in response to the EU’s legitimacy crisis. This system, which began taking shape in the early 2000s but expanded significantly over the past decade, now encompasses a vast network of funding programs channeling resources to universities, media outlets, think tanks, and NGOs.

Through his analysis, Fazi has calculated that the EU allocates approximately €80 million annually to media organizations alone, amounting to roughly €1 billion over the last decade. These funds are distributed through competitive calls for proposals, some with explicitly promotional purposes such as “information measures on cohesion policy.”

“In practice, this functions as paid advertising,” Fazi argues. “Imagine if a national government paid media outlets to produce narratives favourable to its policies. Everyone would rightly call it scandalous propaganda. Yet this is exactly what happens with the EU, without being perceived in the same way.”

At the center of this operation is the Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values (CERV) program, a 2021-2027 EU funding initiative managed by the European Commission. While some projects use neutral language ostensibly aimed at promoting media pluralism, Fazi’s research suggests the majority of these funds target countries with governments critical of the EU, such as Poland and Hungary.

“Since the European Commission is not directly elected by national electorates, this amounts to an attempt to use foreign funding to pressure or weaken democratically elected governments,” Fazi contends, drawing parallels to USAID’s decades-long international activities.

The journalist’s critique raises fundamental questions about democratic accountability and the use of public resources to influence domestic politics within member states. While proponents might view such funding as supporting European values, critics like Fazi see it as an inappropriate intervention designed to manipulate public opinion, particularly in countries where euroscepticism has gained political traction.