“We have been incredibly naive in entrusting our democratic space to [American and Chinese] social networks, whose interests are not at all the survival or proper functioning of our democracies.”
From a speech by President Macron on the occasion of German Unity Day, 3 October 2025
“Finally, it is up to us Europeans to take up this challenge of democracy, in these strange times when the President of the French Republic comes to Germany to explain that one of our challenges is democracy. But that is where we are. And we must look at it not simply with a voice tinged with sadness, but with lucidity and, here too, determination. If we are at this point, it is because doubt has set in, doubt about our institutions, about what held our democracy together, which is undoubtedly the result of what we have not done well enough, and that is why we must always question ourselves. It is also undoubtedly the end of an era, but there is something happening in our countries, which is like a degeneration of our democracies.
So yes, we are under attack from outside. We are under attack from enemies of democracy. We need to recognise this, and that justifies defending [democracy]. When propagandists from authoritarian regimes attack our public spaces and social networks with disinformation, we are under threat from outside. When authoritarian regimes come to spread their messages, we are threatened from outside. But we would be very naive not to see that from within, we are turning against ourselves. We doubt ourselves. We are no longer entirely sure of this democracy. I heard the [German] Chancellor’s speech and I agree with every word he said. But how many leaders in our countries tell us that the problem with our democracies today is the rule of law? Many. How many of our fellow citizens today think that the problem with our democracies today is manipulation by governments and that science is no longer free? Many. How many explain to us that today, in our societies, so many of our fellow citizens doubt the truth, what is true and what is false? So many. Sometimes, these phenomena are indeed exacerbated by foreign interference and manipulation. That is true. But we have a problem with ourselves, with the infrastructure of our democracies, if I may say so.
First, we must regain collective efficiency. And I think that one of the crises of democracy stems from the fact that, here too, we have created systems that have become more sophisticated over time, but which have become too slow or too incomplete to respond to the challenges of the times. We are in a period of great change, and we must regain collective efficiency. And wherever we want to simplify, wherever we want to move faster and stronger while respecting the rule of law and our rules, we are right. And I say this because sometimes it creates tensions, and we must be wary of all that. It is right, and I believe absolutely necessary, to try to speed up and make our political decisions more effective while respecting the rule of law. If we do not do so, if collectively we do not make the effort to make our democracies more effective, then collectively, whether we like it or not, we will fuel the discourse that casts doubt on the rules themselves or on the principle of those rules, that is to say, the rule of law. And so we must all work to make our democracies more effective and stronger.
The second thing is that in our societies, we must also rediscover a sense of respect, particularly respect between all citizens and towards those who hold democratic office. I say this, again, with great seriousness, but we are seeing something everywhere in our societies that is undermining democracy. It is public debate that is turning into hate speech, it is public debate that is turning into violence against politicians, it is public debate that, in the name of freedom of expression, is justifying violence. The heart of democracy is that we can confront opinions in the public sphere. We can demonstrate, we can vote, we choose our leaders and your representatives choose the law. But the absolute rule that goes with it is respect. And every time we are weak in justifying verbal or physical violence in our democracies, we contribute to letting it degenerate.
“We have been incredibly naive in entrusting our democratic space to social networks that are controlled either by large American entrepreneurs or large Chinese companies, whose interests are not at all the survival or proper functioning of our democracies.“
And then, we naively underestimated – and I say this for myself too – the fact that democracy means elections, representatives with mandates, representatives who vote on laws, etc. But it is a public space, a public opinion that is forged and that builds majorities of opinion. The lifeblood of democracy is our people and the public opinions that are formed there. And in recent years, and especially in the past decade, we have allowed our public information and democratic space to be completely transformed. And we did so as if, deep down, it would allow us to continue living as we always had in a democracy. And deep down, we have allowed a democratic public space to develop where everyone is hooded and anonymous, where the rule is that you have to insult others if you want to be popular, where you don’t know, in this public space, imagine a large square, whether you are dealing with real people or fake people, and where you give equal value to someone who shouts much louder and tells you: “This vaccine is not a vaccine. What you are telling me is false and spreads the worst kind of misinformation.” We live in a public space that looks like this. How can you expect there not to be immense democratic fatigue and people increasingly heading towards nervous breakdowns? I will put it more bluntly. We have been incredibly naive in entrusting our democratic space to social networks that are controlled either by large American entrepreneurs or large Chinese companies, whose interests are not at all the survival or proper functioning of our democracies.
You live in [digital] spaces where, from a very young age, your children are exposed to the worst content. And look at the epidemic of mental health issues and eating disorders among our teenagers and young people. It is entirely correlated with the emergence of these social networks. We have allowed public spaces to develop where everything is done to prevent reason, since, ultimately, the order of merit is that emotion is superior to argument and that negative emotion is superior to positive emotion. This is a complete bias towards our democracies going to extremes, towards noise and fury prevailing over reasoned argument, towards music quickly disappearing to make way for shouting, and towards algorithms designed to promote cognitive excitement, overreaction, and the volume of what we like or dislike, again favouring extremes, because at the heart of these models is the monetisation of your presence in order to sell it to advertisers.
We did not design our democracies for this. We are a long way from the democratic agora of Antiquity. And so, if we Europeans do not wake up and say, ‘We want to take back control of our democracies,’ I can tell you this: within 10 years, all those who are playing on or with this [digital] infrastructure will have won. And we will be a continent, like many others, of conspiracy theorists, extremists, noise and fury. If we believe in democratic order, let us put science and knowledge back at the heart of things, let us put scientific authority back at the heart of things, let us put culture, education and learning back at the heart of things, let us protect our teenagers and young people from these social networks, let us give these social networks rules so that they have, in a way, the same rules as those of the democratic space, meaning that there are no hidden people, meaning that there are no fake accounts creating false excitement. And let us enforce the same rules. When you have a newspaper, you are responsible for what is published in it. When you have a social network, you must be responsible for what is published on it. Otherwise, racism, anti-Semitism and hatred of others will triumph on our continent. We have the means to rebuild a 21st-century democracy. We just need to take that leap. It’s up to us to do it.
So yes, ladies and gentlemen, faced with the return of dark times, illiberal regimes, authoritarian regimes that feel emboldened and are always the objective allies of extremist parties, there is a way forward: the new Enlightenment. There is a way to still believe in and desire enlightenment. There is a way to love culture, music, literature, conversation and controversy, to believe that respect and science are stronger than hatred and fury. This path is once again for our Europe to emerge from a kind of minority status into which it has fallen back somewhat in recent times. Yes, our Europe, which has remained united and which is the strength behind everything we have achieved in recent decades, must seize this new era. And, as it did 35 years ago, it must be the continent of boldness and determination to build strategic, economic, technological and democratic power. That is what I want to say to you today, on German Unity Day, on behalf of European unity. We will succeed and consolidate our unity, both within each of our countries and across our continent, if we have the boldness and determination of those who tore down walls 35 years ago. It is up to us to do this. And what we need to think about for the coming century is a powerful Europe. And that is, basically, everything we had forbidden ourselves to think about for all those decades, but to do it together. And if I am here today, it is to say these words to you: to do it together.”
Full speech (in French): https://www.elysee.fr/emmanuel-macron/2025/10/03/deplacement-a-sarrebruck-pour-la-journee-de-lunite-allemande
Defend Democracy, 4 October 2025
