SATISH SHARMA - not just Rotigraphy.: THE TRUTH IS NO LONGER A DEFENSE IN THE EU

https://x.com/j_bg/status/2073419051892642241

Translated from French

 THE TRUTH IS NO LONGER A DEFENSE IN THE EU — CJEU, July 2, 2026, case C-67/25. I read the judgment in full. Here's what it says.

Three individuals are being CRIMINALLY prosecuted in Germany — 3 months to 5 years in prison — for relaying 4 videos from RT Germany on a blog without ads, without subscriptions, funded by donations from its readers.

The Court has just ruled that they are "operators" within the meaning of sanctions regulation 833/2014. It doesn't matter that there was no profit motive. It doesn't matter that the dissemination was "isolated and of negligible scope" (argument explicitly rejected, §55-56).

But the key point lies elsewhere: AT NO POINT does the Court examine what the videos contained. True? False? Irrelevant. The text prohibits "any content" from listed media. If RT publishes that the sky is blue and you share it, you're within the scope of the offense.

The criterion is no longer "is it true?" but "who says it?".

Generations of Europeans have fought — from Milton to the 1881 law — for statements to be judged, not the speakers. For the truth to always be a defense. This judgment retraces the path in reverse.

Cherry on top: the Commission itself had published an FAQ stating that only "commercial or professional operators" were targeted. The Court sweeps it aside (§42-45). Citizens prosecuted for acts from 2023, judged according to an interpretation that didn't exist in 2023.

And §54 will go down in the annals: funding by reader donations is described there as a risk factor for "foreign interference." The model of all independent press, transformed into an index of suspicion.

You can hate RT — I have no sympathy for Kremlin propaganda. That's not the issue. Cutting the signal from a warring state organ is one thing. Sending citizens to prison for a share, without the truth of the content being taken into account, is another.

Full judgment:

Rate this translation:

Quote

Arnaud Bertrand

@RnaudBertrand

14h

This is properly insane: quite literally the worst example of censorship I've ever heard of anywhere.

I checked the actual ruling (which you can see here: https://courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/r-v-staatsanwaltschaft-saarbrcken-cjeu-judgment.pdf) and, to be clear, it isn't just censorship in the conventional sense - blocking access to a website