The EU Has Abandoned Democracy

[00:00] The European Union just turned its back on  democracy. A majority of EU elected politicians,   the people voted into office by European citizens,  just voted no. 314 of them stood up and said that  

[00:12] messaging platforms should not be allowed to  scan the contents of people's private messages.   In contrast, only 276 disagreed. The side  against surveillance won the vote, but then   it passed anyway because of some very creative  voting rules hardwired into the EU system.  

[00:29] Winning the vote was enough to stop it. Chat  control now moves forward until 2028. So,   what the hell just happened? Well, apparently this  is an institution where a majority can vote no and  

[00:41] still lose. And that says a lot about who the  EU actually answers to. But believe it or not,   this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes  to how far the EU has strayed. So today, we'll   look at the powers EU [music] elites just gave  themselves against the will of the people. How  

[00:56] they forced through this draconian measure after  it was already rejected and how check control   is just one piece of a much, much bigger plan.  My name is DC and this is the Coin Bureau. Now,  

[01:08] let's start this unbelievable story by looking at  what chat control actually does. The name sounds   abstract, which is probably the entire point, but  make no mistake, it's pointed directly at every   single EU citizen. Essentially, chat control lets  platforms scan the contents of private messages  

[01:24] looking for illegal material. So, not messages  flagged by a court or messages from suspect,   everyone's messages. That should already be cause  for concern for anyone that cares about privacy   and security. But even the most basic principles  of a free society aren chat control. Normally,  

[01:42] you're left alone unless there is a reason to  suspect you of anything. You're presumed innocent,   and someone has to earn the right to look. That's  reasonable. But chat control turns this idea on   its head. It treats every ordinary European as  someone to be checked first just in case. So,  

[01:58] the default assumption is now suspicion. I don't  want to go full doomer here because there was   at least a decent carve out for those that still  care about privacy. After a significant fight, the   European Parliament adopted an amendment aiming to  exclude end-to-end encrypted apps like Signal from  

[02:14] Scope. Although that carve out still needs council  approval expected by around October 2026 before it   becomes final. Now, that's a solid win and we'll  come back to why it happened a bit later because   there's plenty to look at there. But everything  else is still fair game. standard email,  

[02:30] the cloud inbox where your whole life is archived,  direct messages on platforms without encryption,   the stuff you would assume only the other  person sees. I mean, think about all the photos,   the conversations, the halfformed thoughts in your  mind that you'd never say out loud in public. For  

[02:45] people in Europe under chat control, all of it is  now under a standing permission to be looked at.   And that permission runs until April 2028.  So that's what we're dealing with here.   But how could something so unpopular with  everyday people end up becoming an official rule  

[03:01] in a democracy? Well, that's exactly the problem.  It was a vote they simply kept rerunning until   they eventually got the answer they wanted. Very  democratic indeed. Back on the 26th of March 2026,  

[03:13] Parliament had already rejected extending the  scanning framework. The tally then was 311 against   2284. So the idea was voted down. Dead happy days.  The old temporary rule expired on the 3rd of April  

[03:26] exactly as Parliament intended, and that should  have been the end of it, but it most certainly   wasn't the end of it. A few weeks later, it came  back from the grave. The council formally revived   its position on the 2nd of July, 2026, and then an  urgency procedure was invoked to bypass committee  

[03:43] review and force an immediate vote. And that  urgency motion scraped through by a narrow margin.   Then the final boat landed on the 9th of July,  the last sitting day before the summer recess,  

[03:55] the one day when attendance is thin and scrutiny  is low while half of the people in the building   are already daydreaming about the airport. So in  other words, the proposal was rejected again and   again and again, then dug up and reanimated  until the desired outcome was forced through.  

[04:10] And the timing here was no accident either.  Certainly not. It was the entire strategy. Now,   to get a clear picture of that, we have to take  a closer look at the numbers that turned a defeat   into a victory. This is crucial to understand,  so stick with me here. On this type of vote,  

[04:24] a second reading rule, stopping the measure didn't  just require more people in the room voting.   No sir, it required an absolute majority of  every single seat in parliament. And in total,   there are 720 seats, which means blocking it  needed 361 votes. And the opposition got 340.  

[04:41] So in theory they actually won the room by  38 votes but still fell 47 short of the bar.   And this is the element where things get  sinister because absence counts as a yes.  

[04:53] Every MEP who didn't show up, every empty chair  on that last day before recess functionally sided   with the surveillance state. Silence is recognized  as consent which is absolutely crazy to think  

[05:06] about. So schedule the vote when the chamber  is emptiest and it becomes much much easier to   squeeze through a highly unpopular rule like this  one. The vote was merely theater for an engineered   outcome. When people vote no, but the rule still  wins, the rule was built to protect the outcome.  

[05:23] So much for European democracy. Now tracking  these procedural games as they happen is tough,   especially when there's so much at stake here.  These types of big decisions shape our freedom.   So, if you want more breakdowns like this one,  then be sure to check out the Finance Bureau.  

[05:38] That's our channel for global finance, politics,  macro, and stories just like this one. So, be sure   to subscribe so you don't miss the next breakdown  of the issues that impact your life just as much   as your portfolio. Okay, back to Europe. And now  we get to some of the damning details of this  

[05:53] absolute mess. Why do I say that? Well, because if  you're wondering how something like chat control   can even be legal, well, then you're not the only  one. In fact, EU politicians were warned that it   may be illegal and they were warned in writing  by their own lawyers. On the 10th of June 2026,  

[06:10] the Council Legal Service, that's the body that  checks EU Council legislation for legal problems,   looked at this proposal and concluded it was  likely legal. So, we're not talking about some   activist group or some other outside campaigner.  Their own in-house advisers were saying, "This  

[06:26] looks dodgy." And the stated reason gets right at  the heart of this entire issue. you can't treat   an entire population as suspects. The Council  Legal Service warned that the rule amounted   to sweeping suspicionless scanning of private  messages. They said it was likely incompatible  

[06:42] with article 7 of the EU's Charter fundamental  rights, the right to respect for your private   life and your communications. And crucially, they  said the voluntary label changes nothing because   the core problem, potential access to everyone's  messages, stays exactly the same regardless of  

[06:58] whatever you want to call it. Some legal experts  went even further, warning it would probably   be struck down by the EU's top court if anyone  challenged it. So, EU politicians were told on the   record by the people whose job it is to keep them  inside the law that this crosses a line. And yet,  

[07:14] they pushed it through anyway. An institution  that ignores its own lawyers only cares about   pushing its own agenda forward. And now to the  crazy double standard. While this institution   demands total visibility into our messages,  it's fighting hard to keep its own hidden.  

[07:30] And I mean that literally. During the single  biggest medical purchase in the EU's history,   a contract for up to€1.8 billion doses worth 35  billion, Commission President Ozula Fandeline   was exchanging text messages directly with the  CEO of Fizer through personal text messages,  

[07:46] not through official channels. And when  journalists asked to see them using the EU's   freedom of information law, the answer was simply  no. The messages they said were short-lived,   logistical, and not important enough to keep. And  then, of course, conveniently, they couldn't be  

[08:01] found at all. They replaced the phone and wiped  the old devices without transferring any data,   as you do. The EU's watchdog, the European  embudzman, called this maladministration.   And in May 2025, the EU's own general COD ruled  against the commission, finding it had failed to  

[08:17] give any plausible explanation for why messages  about a 35 billion euro deal had simply vanished.   The commission chose not to appeal and the  ruling stats. So to put simply, they can read   your messages, but you can't read theirs.  Your privacy is negotiable or non-existent,  

[08:33] but their secrecy is protected. And if you think  that is a one-off, a single embarrassing episode,   of course not. This is a pattern and  it's still running today. In June 2026,   the embotszman ruled against the commissioner  again over a different vanished message. This  

[08:48] time from President Mron about trade talks deleted  automatically by a disappearing messages feature.   The embotszman called the commission's handling of  the deleted Macron messages a serious problem and  

[09:00] said current practices create a blanket barrier to  public oversight, recommending that such messages   be mandatorily stored going forward. And also in  June 2026, a fresh inquiry open into yet another  

[09:12] private group chat reportedly used by Fer line  and several heads of state to coordinate strategy.   The commission has refused to release those  contents. So that's three separate cases of the   same institution running its biggest decisions  through channels designed to vanish without a  

[09:27] trace. the exact opposite of the communications  that are archived and searchable forever which   it now demands from you scanning for the citizens  and autodelete for the politicians. But if we step  

[09:39] back for a moment and think about the structure  of the EU, it all becomes clearer when you look at   who these people are and how they got into their  positions in the first place. Consider Christina   Gart as president of the European Central Bank.  She sets monetary policy for the entire Euro zone.  

[09:54] That's over 340 million people across 21  countries. The value of every single euro in   people's pockets runs through decisions she makes.  But she was never once on a ballot. Not once.  

[10:07] She was nominated by heads of state and appointed  by a qualified majority vote behind closed doors   for a single 8-year term. No voter anywhere in the  Euro zone put her there. And that means no voter   can remove her. People can vote her out simply  because nobody actually voted her in. So many  

[10:23] of the officials scanning the public's messages  were never actually chosen by the public. And   the people who lost the vote and won anyway can't  be unchosen by the public. That's the intentional   design of the system. Now, if you're in the EU  and skeptical about how critical I'm being here,  

[10:39] you might think, "Hey, I've got nothing to  hide. I'm no criminal. Why should I care if   some algorithm skims my inbox?" If this is you,  please let me propose a different point of view.   You're willingly handing over your freedom.  But you don't have to believe me. Brussels  

[10:54] has given us the answer to that. Fun line just  confirmed that the commission intends to propose   EUwide age restrictions on social media. And the  technology to enforce that already exists. The EU   has built an age verification app that can use a  passport, national identity card, or a digital ID  

[11:11] to prove someone meets the required age. Now,  this doesn't yet mean every European must show   ID to open Instagram. Brussels says the system can  verify age anonymously. So there is no mistaking   what's taking shape here. Chat control creates  the power to scan private communications at scale.  

[11:28] Age verification creates the framework for online  accounts to be gated by a government-run system   rooted in a person's real world identity.  And if we combine that, the pieces of a   full surveillance system are being assembled.  An identitybacked requirement to gain access,  

[11:43] control over who gets access, and message scanning  once you got access. Freedom is eroded piece by   piece and every piece is presented to the public  with the same justification, safety and protecting   children. We're seeing the same thing in places  like the UK and Australia. Ordinary people are  

[11:59] made more visible to the system while the people  running it remain hidden from scrutiny. People's   messages can be scanned and their identities can  be checked. But when the public asks to see the   messages behind a 35 billion euro deal, those  messages somehow vanish. Great system. Thank  

[12:14] God I support this with my taxes. Okay, although  the overall situation really doesn't look great,   there are at least some positive signs on the  horizon. The system did essentially steamroll   the rejection vote on chat control, but it still  had to stop and concede some significant ground.  

[12:30] That encryption car, the one that pulled  the likes of Signal from the scanner means   there's still some good being fought for on the  major political stage. And most importantly,   people are finally coming together. There are  some privacy groups and lawmakers fighting a  

[12:43] good fight and public backlash also help force  that concession because it was so deafening.   A corrupt system relies on everyday people being  too distracted to care. But if people stay engaged   and voice their concerns with some energy at  least, there's still hope to get things on the  

[12:59] right track. Please get highly opinionated and let  us know what you think in the comments. Is this   the beginning of an EU surveillance state or are  some of us worried about nothing? And remember,   if you enjoy digging deep on topics like this,  then you should definitely check out the Finance  

[13:14] Bureau, like this video on how China is set to  shake up the entire global economy. As always,   thank you so much for watching, and I'll see  you again very soon. This is DC signing off.