Vice President JD Vance’s speech to Europe’s leaders at the Munich Security Conference on Feb. 14 underscored how far Europe has fallen away from its reverence of true democracy and freedom, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Vance’s speech slammed the nations of Europe for not adhering to democratic principles such as freedom of speech and fair elections, pointing to examples such as the cancelling of Romanian elections and the UK’s conviction of Adam Smith-Connor for praying outside of an abortion clinic, among many other examples. Foreign policy experts told the DCNF that the speech served to remind Europe of the values it once held in high regard but only gives lip service to now.
“Vice President Vance sent an important and long overdue message to European leaders: the chief threat to democracy comes not from Russia, but from our own departures from the shared values that long underpinned our Western community. The Biden administration tried to unify the NATO alliance around fear, a shared perception of the Russian threat,” George Beebe, director of grand strategy at the Quincy Institute, told the DCNF. “But in denouncing censorship based on exaggerated fears of ‘disinformation,’ calling for a commonsense approach to dealing with migration, and urging tolerance for dissenting views, Vance is attempting to rebuild trans-Atlantic relations on a new foundation: a restored belief in our own virtues and vitality, which in turn can help us deal with rivals from a basis of not just military strength, but also the self-confidence necessary for effective diplomacy.”
As one example, Vance brought up Sweden’s conviction of Salwan Najem on Feb. 3, who publicly burned a Quran in Stockholm in a street protest outside the Iraq embassy. His friend who protested with him, Salwan Momika, was murdered in January in the wake of the incident.
Vance underscored the judge’s statement in Najem’s case, who said that Sweden’s free speech laws did not give Najem “a free pass to do or say anything without risking offending the group that holds that belief.”
Germany also prosecutes its own citizens under hate speech laws, even dishing out jail sentences for repeat “offenders,” according to CBS News. German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius criticized Vance’s speech a day later, calling it “not acceptable” and that democracy “does not mean that anyone can say anything” and that democracies should be “against extremists who try to destroy it.”
Justin Logan, director of defense and foreign policy studies at the CATO Institute, told the DCNF that the divide between the U.S. and Europe was put on full display in the reaction to Vance’s speech.
“For me, the takeaway of the Vance speech—and particularly the Pistorius response to it—is to make clear just how big the values gulf between the US and Europe really is,” Logan told the DCNF. “Vance pointed to some uncomfortable truths about what we could call the tenuous European commitment to fundamental values like free speech, and Pistorius returned fire, asserting that democracy does not mean that a vociferous minority can decide what truth is. Freedom means anyone can decide what truth is. No government, no dictator is in possession of capital-T Truth. Freedom means people can pursue truth themselves.”
European leaders have long espoused democratic values, such as British Prime Minister Kier Starmer, who said in a speech commemorating D-Day in 2024 that Britain has unique respect for democratic institutions.
“Our joint endeavour, our shared values, our common respect for freedom, democracy, liberty, that’s what we were fighting for and that fight never stops,” Starmer said in the speech.
French President Emmanuel Macron said in a March 2022 speech that the defense of Ukraine was about “defending democracy, sovereignty, and the right of people to choose their own future.” German Chancellor Olaf Schulz, who’s Social Democratic Party lost an election on Sunday due to a conservative surge, said in June that “freedom of speech must be protected at all costs.”
Kaja Kallas, vice president of the European Commission, accused Vance of “trying to pick a fight” with Europe, according to the BBC. Moreover, Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu said on X a day after the speech that “All RO [Romanian] authorities are committed to organising free and fair elections by empowering citizens and guaranteeing the freedom to vote.”
Vance also took shots at Europe’s handling of its immigration crisis, highlighting the migrant terrorist attack in Munich that took place just a day before the speech as emblematic of “conscious decisions” from European leaders to let in migrants. Foreign nationals made up nearly 10% of the EU’s population as of Jan. 1, 2024, according to EU statistics.
“The number of immigrants who entered the [European Union] from non-EU countries doubled between 2021 and 2022 alone and of course it’s gotten much higher since,” Vance said in his speech. “And we know the situation, it didn’t materialize in a vacuum. It is a result of a series of conscious decisions made by politicians all over the continent and others across the world over the span of a decade.”
“Vance knew this would not be a welcome message in Munich. But it was a necessary one,” Beebe told the DCNF.
The European Council and the UK Prime Minister’s office did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
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