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As in darker times, Belgian police erected barricades outside the European Parliament on 15 July. Behind them stood the elected representatives of Europe. In front of them stood citizens carrying more than half a million declarations of support for the Save Europe Act. The papers arrived in a wheelbarrow. Brussels responded with barriers and police; a rather efficient summary of its present understanding of democracy.
The Save Europe Act is a political campaign founded by Dutch commentator Eva Vlaardingerbroek. It calls for a moratorium on immigration from non-European and “non-Western” countries, stronger external borders, accelerated removal of illegal migrants and an EU framework for voluntary or incentivised remigration. Its organisers say that more than 530,000 people have registered their support since the campaign began on 31 May1.
Those expressions of support are politically significant, although, according to the EU Commission, they are not yet verified statements under the formal European Citizens’ Initiative procedure. While the distinction matters legally, it does little to diminish the democratic message sent by half a million Europeans in a few weeks.
The organisers intended to present the signatures at the European Parliament and hold a demonstration at Place du Luxembourg. Romain De Reusme, the Socialist mayor of Ixelles, prohibited the gathering one day before it was due to take place. He invoked the possibility of disorder, reportedly relying on events at an earlier demonstration involving a student organisation associated with the Brussels rally.
Belgium’s Council of State overturned the prohibition2 only hours before the event. The mayor responded3 by describing the judgment as “democratic suicide.” The phrase reveals more than he probably intended. Judicial protection of peaceful political assembly now appears suicidal to an official who sought to cancel a lawful opposition demonstration through an eleventh-hour administrative order.
A municipal mayor has legitimate responsibilities for public order. Those responsibilities do not include deciding which European political causes may be heard outside the European Parliament. Police can separate demonstrators from counter-demonstrators, prevent violence and arrest anyone who commits an offence. Speculative disorder cannot become a standing licence to suppress a political assembly because its message offends the local administration.
The EU Charter itself guarantees freedom of expression and peaceful assembly: Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union arts. 11–12, 2012 O.J. (C 326) 391, 3974. Those guarantees become ornamental when authorities can prohibit an opposition rally first and leave citizens to find lawyers capable of obtaining emergency judicial relief hours before it begins. A right that depends upon winning urgent litigation every time an official dislikes the speaker is a permission administered by the state. And an expensive one.
The most disturbing episode concerned Sebastian Tynkkynen, a Finnish member of the European Parliament. In a post on X5, Tynkkynen says Belgian police prevented him from entering Parliament for almost an hour while he was attempting to accompany the petition. The allegation currently rests on his public account; neither Parliament nor the Belgian police appears to have published a satisfactory explanation. His status is independently confirmed by Parliament’s own records6.
If his account is accurate, the incident reaches beyond ordinary police overreach. Protocol No. 7 provides that “[n]o administrative or other restriction shall be imposed on the free movement of Members of the European Parliament travelling to or from the place of meeting:” Protocol (No. 7) on the Privileges and Immunities of the European Union art. 7, 2012 O.J. (C 326) 266, 2677.
A municipal authority cannot usurp the rights attached to a European parliamentary mandate. Belgian police do not possess a political veto over which MEPs may reach Parliament, nor may access depend upon whether an elected member is accompanying a fashionable petition. Parliamentary privilege protects the institution and the electorate it represents. Obstructing a member obstructs his voters.
The episode also illustrates the institutional sleight of hand that increasingly characterises Brussels. Formally, the European Commission did not order the mayor to prohibit the demonstration, and the European Parliament may not have instructed the police to block anyone. Responsibility disappears into a fog of overlapping jurisdictions: the municipality issues the order, Belgian police erect the barriers, Parliament controls access, and the Commission questions the admissibility of the initiative. Every authority can disclaim ownership while the political opposition encounters the combined force of all of them.
That is how an authoritarian apparatus develops inside institutions that continue to describe themselves as liberal. It rarely announces the suspension of democracy. It uses registration requirements, security perimeters, municipal ordinances, procedural objections and expansive interpretations of “European values.” Each measure can be defended in isolation. Their cumulative and strikingly partisan operation produces a system in which the administrative state determines which political demands may reach the democratic arena.
The Commission has reportedly warned the Save Europe Act organisers that their proposal may be “manifestly contrary” to EU values because distinctions based on ethnic, cultural or civilisational origin could constitute racial or ethnic discrimination. The Commission has legal authority to refuse registration where an initiative manifestly conflicts with Article 2 TEU: Regulation (EU) 2019/788, art. 6(3)(e), 2019 O.J. (L 130) 55, 62. Yet registration merely permits citizens to collect official statements of support. It neither enacts the proposal nor endorses its language.
The proper democratic response to a controversial immigration programme is argument, scrutiny and, eventually, a vote. Pre-emptive exclusion converts the Commission from guardian of the Treaties into guardian of the acceptable political spectrum. “European values” then cease to restrain institutional power and become a weapon with which institutions discipline their opponents.
One may reject parts or all of the Save Europe Act. Its demand for distinctions between “Western” and “non-Western” migrants may be challenged. Its rhetoric deserves close examination. But none of that licenses a Socialist mayor to cancel its demonstration, Belgian police to obstruct an elected parliamentarian or EU authorities to treat popular opposition to immigration policy as an administrative contaminant.
The right to political participation is tested by unpopular causes. Brussels passes that test only when the courts intervene at the last minute. An EU confident in its democratic legitimacy would have accepted the petition, allowed the demonstration and answered its proponents in public. Instead, half a million expressions of political dissent met a barricade, while a member of Parliament reportedly waited outside his own legislature. The apparatus may call that public order. Europeans are entitled to recognise political power when they see it.
