Year XXXIX, Number 1, July 2026

Michele Fiorillo

Coordinator of Civico Europa and Citizens Take Over Europe. Philosopher.

Democracy is under threat across Europe: disinformation, manipulation and external interference are undermining the quality of public debate; national-populist forces are gaining ground and multiplying in every country like the heads of a hydra; and there is widespread mistrust of institutions, as well as voter apathy and the fragmentation of the political class and civil society – whilst the European public sphere, still in the early stages of its development, finds itself overwhelmed by the rapid pace of global digital transformation and artificial intelligence. Against this backdrop of existential vulnerability, the European Commission presented, in a non-binding communication in November 2025 – alongside the EU Strategy for Civil Society – the launch of the European Democracy Shield: a strategic framework conceived as urgent collective effort to "protect democracy and build the democratic resilience of citizens, societies and institutions".

The Shield is structured around three pillars: safeguarding the integrity of the information space; strengthening democratic institutions, free elections and independent media; and promoting social resilience and citizen engagement. This last pillar is particularly relevant to the construction of the European public sphere: the Commission appears to wish to strengthen civic engagement to counter the fragmentation of public debate caused by digital ecosystems.

The communication assigns a central role to deliberative tools: "the European Citizens' Panels and the Citizens' Engagement Platform, have become important assets to inform and support policymaking, build democratic resilience and foster European citizenship and their use at EU level and in the Member States will be encouraged". The Commission announces its intention to make the participatory platform 'interoperable' – extending it to national, regional and local administrations– and to build a network of national authorities on civic participation, with technical support from the Competence Centre on Participatory and Deliberative Democracy, part of its Joint Research Center.

A European Citizens' Panel on democratic resilience will engage European citizens in reflecting on policies to protect against threats to democracy. The 'alumni' of the European Citizens' Panels – renamed here as Citizens' Engagement Ambassadors –will be involved in promoting civic participation, thereby linking local initiatives with the European dimension– including by leveraging the Europe Direct local centres and the Erasmus+ programme, which will step up support for democratic literacy projects. Finally, a new European Centre for Democratic Resilience will be launched, dedicated to robust operational cooperation against hybrid threats, in particular foreign manipulation and interference in information.

The Centre would bring together the expertise of Member States and candidate countries, as well as EU institutions and agencies, including the European External Action Service – and would be developed gradually on the basis of voluntary participation and contributions from Member States, alongside a platform for dialogue with civil society, academia and the media, and a new European network of fact-checkers.

The structural limitations of the Shield become strikingly apparent here: on the one hand, the predominantly non-binding and piecemeal nature of the proposed measures, their dependence on the competences of the Member States, and the absence of any real new powers for the European institutions; on the other, the risk of an excessively sectoral, security-focused and technocratic approach, which reduces democracy to a mere information issue, without addressing the key questions of European democratic sovereignty – and the Union's strategic and political autonomy. Furthermore, citizen involvement appears to remain largely consultative and disconnected from decision-making processes, risking a democratic engagement gap between deliberation and actual political decision-making– where the weight of the Council's intergovernmentalism would continue to limit the full development of European democracy.

From a strategic perspective, the Shield should be coordinated with the aim of a common European defense, subject to supranational mechanisms of robust democratic control, to be made effective within a framework of the Union's constitutionalization. The intertwining of measures for democratic resilience and defense integration could thus help pave the way for a new de facto constituent moment in Europe. If transformed into politically effective instruments – not least under pressure from pro-European and federalist movements and organized European civil society – the deliberative and participatory mechanisms, cultural and educational programmes and civic networks provided for by the European Democracy Shield could decisively contribute to establish the transnational popular constituent power necessary for the co-creation of a federal Union.