“Undeclared martial law in the EU”
Banishment of critical journalists traces back to NATO
by Norbert Häring,* Germany
(30 January 2026) (CH-S) The Swiss administration’s barely audible sympathy for the fate of Swiss citizen Jacques Baud after EU sanctions were imposed on him, the misguided statement in the “Allgemeine Schweizerische Militärzeitschrift” (ASMZ) on this case, and finally the borderline statements made by Federal Councillor Pfister on freedom of expression at the Swiss Media’s Epiphany Conference on 8 January, were initially attributed to the power centre in Brussels.
(Picture ma)
However, as Norbert Häring explains in the following article, the cause seems to lie much more in NATO’s “cognitive warfare”. NATO calls the shots in the EU. NATO is concerned with winning over the minds of citizens – beyond all democratic and human rights considerations. Words such as “resilience” or “effective strategic communication” and “protection of the information space” mean indoctrination and censorship. They are part of military warfare.
Switzerland is neither in the EU nor in NATO, Mr Pfister. Furthermore, we are not at war – we are and remain neutral. No further rapprochement with these undemocratic organisations.
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The EU’s “Strategic Agenda” for 2024 contains a declaration of war on journalists critical of the EU and NATO, which hardly anyone has noticed. With this agenda, the EU Council faithfully implemented the guidelines of the NATO summit in Vilnius in 2023. The result is drastic sanctions against journalists such as Hüseyin Doğru, Alina Lipp, Thomas Röper and Jacques Baud.
At their summit in Vilnius in 2023, NATO governments announced that they would work with the EU in their increased efforts to build “societal resilience” (or “war readiness”), particularly regarding combating disinformation:
“As we intensify our efforts to build resilience, we will continue to work with our partners who are undertaking similar efforts, particularly with the European Union. [...] We will continue to combat disinformation and misinformation, including through positive and effective strategic communication [propaganda; N.H.]. We will also continue to support our partners in strengthening their resilience to hybrid challenges.”1
This can be read as an admission that NATO is pulling the strings behind the scenes in the fight against so-called disinformation. It is no coincidence that Brussels is the capital of both the EU and NATO. And so it came to pass that the EU, with its “Strategic Agenda 2024–2029” announced in June 2024, swung fully into a course of war readiness.2
Due to a new “geopolitical reality”, the EU Council promises (NATO) to “strengthen (the EU’s) resilience within the framework of an approach that encompasses all threats and the whole of society”, paying particular attention to social and democratic resilience. The argumentation and wording are very similar to those found in NATO statements on resilience.
In this “Strategic Agenda”, the EU Council summarily assesses everything that falls under a very broad definition of “disinformation” as an attempt at destabilisation. “Sowing division” is mentioned in the same breath as terrorism and violent extremism:
“We will strengthen our democratic resilience, including by [...] countering attempts at destabilisation, including through disinformation and hate speech. [...] We will counter attempts to sow division, radicalisation, terrorism and violent extremism.”
In effect, the EU is declaring critics of the government and NATO to be enemies of the state.
The media took no notice of this. Nor should they have. My warning at the time about this declaration of war by the EU on critical journalists was, unfortunately, to prove true all too soon and in a very drastic manner. Journalists who attack the strategic narrative of NATO and the EU on Ukraine and, in Doğru’s case, also on Palestine, were subjected to a medieval ban.3 They were deprived of almost all their human and civil rights.
We should be aware that this not only looks like martial law.
Undeclared martial law already prevails in the EU. It is no coincidence that the Chancellor and others repeatedly tell us that we are not yet at war, but neither are we at peace.4
This means that NATO rules behind the scenes, and the usual constitutional guarantees for peacetime, such as freedom of expression and information, no longer apply when issues important to NATO are at stake.
| * Norbert Häring, born 1963, is a German economics journalist. He has been the economics editor at Handelsblatt since 2002. He successfully runs his blog norberthaering.de and has also published several books, including on the subject of monetary policy. |
Source: https://norberthaering.de/propaganda-zensur/eu-sanktionen-nato-giplel/, 6 January 2026
(Translation “Swiss Standpoint”)
2 https://www.consilium.europa.eu/media/yxrc05pz/sn02167en24_web.pdf
3 https://norberthaering.de/propaganda-zensur/sloat-baud-moreau/