The European Union’s latest list of sanctions against Russia revealed some strange things. For example, the European Commission declared two journalists and a military analyst socially dead. Their bank accounts were frozen, they were banned from travelling, etc., because they spread the “notion of deep state”. Maxime Prévot, as Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs, agreed to this, even though our Constitution prohibits civil death.

This article is not so much about the content, but mainly about the methods. The facts are simple. On 15 December, one of the cases concerned a 71-year-old Swiss ex-soldier, Jacques Baud, who lives in the EU and occasionally appears in the media. Previously, there was the case of a German journalist of Turkish origin who, according to his own statement, did not even write about Ukraine or Russia, but about Gaza.

Why is this method worrying? Because the European Commission can apparently declare someone socially dead without the intervention of a judge and without the accused being able to defend themselves. The Council of the EU, consisting of foreign ministers, approved this without question. And High Representative Kaja Kallas signed the decision.

Only in this way did our Minister of Foreign Affairs, Maxime Prévot (Les Engagés), declare a series of citizens outlaws or outcasts. Civil or social death is something that is expressly prohibited in many European constitutions. Civil death has been abolished in both the Belgian and Dutch constitutions. Article 18 of the Belgian Constitution explicitly states: “Civil death has been abolished; it cannot be reintroduced”.

On social media, people claim that the EU is dictatorial, but that is irrelevant. What is relevant is the illegality of the decision. In a historical context, the concept of social death for an outlaw meant that the person was placed outside the protection of the law and effectively excluded from society. The person was treated as if they did not exist or had no rights.

The latter happened in the European Union and was approved by the foreign ministers of the 27 EU Member States. Including Maxime Prévot, who studied political science, where this is taught in every introduction to law.

Where did the European Commission get the idea of declaring citizens civilly dead and pretending that citizens have no legal protection whatsoever as soon as they express the wrong opinions?

Where did the Commission get the arrogance to order the freezing of bank accounts and so on, without a conviction or the intervention of a judge or legal apparatus, but through a decision of the Council? This includes the savings accounts of the children of those involved.

This arrogance on the part of the Commission is nothing new. In June, they did the same thing to the German journalist Hüseyin Doğru, who is invariably referred to as a “Turkish journalist” in EU sources. In June, the EU placed three journalists on a sanctions list, barring them from entering the EU and freezing their bank accounts. They were banned for allegedly spreading “misinformation” about “Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine” and could face up to five years in prison if they violate the measures.

On 15 December, it was not just Russians and Americans (including a former sheriff from Florida living in Russia) who were targeted, but also the Swiss former military officer and analyst Jacques Baud, the Frenchman Xavier Moreau (former military officer and publisher of the very fringe blog Stratpol) and the acclaimed Ukrainian journalist Diana Vitaliivna Panchenko, who denounced corruption in Ukraine.

Regardless of the fact that some of them may indeed be spreading propaganda, this is about the principle of freedom of expression and freedom of the press. Numerous sources have already shown that the 71-year-old Baud in particular was a serious mistake on the part of the Commission.

Apparently, Ursula von der Leyen and her entourage decide who to blacklist. Normally, such a claim would be met with derision, but here the arbitrariness seems so banal that it mainly affects those who are not liked by Von der Leyen. In other words, mainly German-speaking voices. Perhaps that is why she wants to set up a European intelligence service. Only intelligence services have to verify their information and appeal to judges. Apparently, the Commission does not.

Why then did a French-speaking retired Swiss soldier living in the EU find himself in the eye of the storm? It was because of the work of a French NGO against conspiracy theories. This is ironic, because Baud’s accusation is actually a conspiracy theory in itself. The man is said to be a Russian asset because he said that Ukraine may never win the war. At least, that is how a Russian broadcaster quoted him.

Baud has written books in the past, and one of those books caused a French NGO against conspiracy theories to target him.

The organisation in question is L’Observatoire du conspirationnisme, better known to us as the NGO Conspiracy Watch. It was founded in 2007 by political scientist Rudy Reichstadt and later, when subsidies started flowing in, a historian, Valérie Igounet, joined the team. The latter specialised in “the far right and negationism”.

Initially, this was a hobby of a left-wing civil servant, but thanks to subsidies from the government of French Socialist Prime Minister Manuel Valls (PS) and donations, they have been able to make a good living from it ever since. Especially after they added anti-LGBTQ hatred to their repertoire in 2017. It is no coincidence that this happened after the creation in 2016 of the French government agency Délégation interministérielle à la lutte contre le racisme, l’antisémitisme et la haine anti-LGBT (DILCRAH). Dilcrah is allowed to distribute 100 million euros per year in subsidies. The top positions went to socialist loyalists of the ministers.

This allowed Reichstadt to give up his job as a civil servant and chief of staff at the Paris City Council. From then on, the French government promoted the NGO’s website in schools.

After the election of French President Emmanuel Macron, the subsidies piled up. They came from the far left in the Paris city council to the services of defected salon socialists in Macron’s national government. According to French journalist Laurent Dauré, Macron recycled many socialists from under President François Hollande and Prime Minister Manuel Valls. The so-called Vallsists became Macronists. This whole subsidy mill is an example of what the French call la Macronie.

During a hearing in the French Senate in 2023, Reichstadt claimed that Conspiracy Watch’s budget was €203,000 per year, about half of which came from government subsidies. €100,000 annually and another €50,000 thanks to their recognition as an online press organisation by the French government. €150,000 per year came from the private sector, from a foundation called Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah (FMS). However, Dauré calculated Conspiracy Watch’s income to be considerably higher when adding up all kinds of subsidies.

Conspiracy Watch was not the only source used by the European Commission to tackle Jacques Baud. According to Hervé Letoqueux, the head of Check First, a company that monitors online disinformation, Baud spreads the notion of the “deep state” among the public. The deep state is a secret network of influential individuals and institutions within a government that operates outside the democratic control of the elected political leadership. This includes NGOs that receive subsidies and the civil servants who distribute such subsidies.

Letoqueux himself came from the French government agency Viginum, whose task is to “protect public digital debates from the influence of foreign states”. Viginum falls under the French military security and intelligence services. Check First, on the other hand, is a Finnish private company that does the same thing throughout the EU for a fee, but is not controlled by a parliamentary committee.

Given the entirely illegal method used by the Commission and the Council of the EU to target citizens who claim that the deep state exists, one could almost interpret this as proof of the existence of that deep state.