Guest post by Drieu Godefridi
“Civil death” was a punishment under ancient French law—abolished in 1854—that extinguished the legal personality of the convicted individual: loss of property, family rights, and civil existence, while leaving the person physically alive.
Civil death—cruel, total, annihilating—was believed to belong to a bygone era. The European Union has just reinvented it—and made it worse.
The case of Swiss Colonel Jacques Baud, who has been struck with civil death by the EU, first caught my attention. By a sovereign decision dated December 15, 2024, the EU banned Mr. Baud from its territory and “froze” all his assets. However hard I searched, I was unable to determine precisely what Mr. Baud was accused of. I therefore turned to the legal texts of the European Union itself.
What I found there is illuminating.
On October 8, 2024, the European Union granted itself the power to ban from its territory and seize all assets belonging to individuals who plan, direct, carry out, directly or indirectly support, or otherwise facilitate the “manipulation of information and interference”. This power also applies to any natural or legal person associated with such individuals, or who supports them (Council Decision (CFSP) 2024/2643 and Council Regulation (EU) 2024/2642).
But what exactly does “manipulation of information” mean? Is not 99% of EU communication—particularly in the fields of energy and the environment—wholly or partly a form of information manipulation? And is not the propaganda produced by the EU since February 2022, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, portraying Russia as perpetually on the brink of collapse, itself a textbook example of information manipulation?
In fact, objective information does not exist. Information is human; it is never mathematically pure. All communication—and especially political communication—inevitably contains an element of manipulation. Here we encounter the same category—“disinformation”—that enables the EU to demand censorship of social networks under the Digital Services Act (DSA). This is precisely the category that the U.S. federal government, mindful of freedom and the rule of law, is demanding be removed from the DSA.
To be placed on the EU’s list of civilian deaths—of living burials—all that is required is for the EU’s so-called “Minister of Foreign Affairs” to request it, imagine it, and have her request validated by the Council.
“The Council, acting unanimously on a proposal from a Member State or the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (the ‘High Representative’), shall decide.” That is all. No trial. No hearing. No investigation. Nothing of the sort. A moment of inspiration from the EU’s “Minister of Foreign Affairs” suffices.
Since December 2024, the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy—such is her official title—has been Kaja Kallas. You barely know her. She is a complete unknown from tiny Estonia—1.372 million inhabitants, fewer than the city of San Diego—elected by no one, yet entrusted by the EU with exorbitant powers, including the power to demand the civil death of any person residing on EU territory.
Ms. Kallas, who comes from a family history marked by stark contrasts—her father collaborated with the Soviet occupiers—has distinguished herself since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 by her radical, some would say rabid, hostility toward Russia. It is as though she seeks to drag all of Europe—and, if possible, the United States—into an armed conflict with Russia, in order to avoid the Baltic states standing alone before the ogre. A curious strategy, in which the remedy is identical to the disease: war.
With its decision of October 8, 2024, the EU thus granted itself the power to strike, excommunicate—indeed, to zombify—absolutely anyone. This is the very definition of arbitrariness: the creation of a concept so vague—“manipulation of information”—that it allows anyone to be struck down, or rather destroyed, according to the wishes and whims of the prince (or, in this case, the princess: Kallas). It is the perfect negation of the rule of law. The very definition of despotism.
By Council Decision (CFSP) 2025/2572 of December 15, 2025, at the request of the omnipresent Kallas, the EU condemned the aforementioned Baud to civil death. The justification? “Manipulation of information.” Nothing more. No illegal act—indeed, not even the slightest suggestion of an offense—is attributed to Mr. Baud. His ideas displease the imperious Ms. Kallas.
Consequently, Mr. Baud no longer has any rights, and all his assets have been seized—without even being heard. Do you find this acceptable? Even the courts of the Inquisition allowed the accused to speak before sentencing them.
It must be clearly understood that this entire procedure is purely administrative and offers no rights of defense whatsoever. Habeas corpus? Magna Carta? Zero. Nothing—to borrow a Russian word—niyet. Under the Penal Code of 1810 (Napoleonic era), Article 18 stipulated that “sentences of hard labor for life and deportation shall entail civil death.” Civil death was therefore imposed by a court of law, with all the attendant guarantees, following a criminal trial.
It was not an autonomous sanction handed down in isolation, but a civil consequence of a criminal conviction rendered by a judge or court. Civil death was abolished by the law of May 31, 1854, which put an end to this legal fiction deemed excessively cruel—until the EU resurrected it as an independent penalty, imposed purely by administrative fiat.
We are thus confronted with sheer arbitrariness, with the temperaments and tastes of absolutism, and with the perfect catalyst for the irrational fury that seems to drive the Estonian Kallas whenever Russia is concerned.
Let us therefore stop directing all our criticism of the EU’s excesses solely at Ursula von der Leyen. Ms. Kaja Kallas also deserves our attention.
Drieu Godefridi is a PhD from the Sorbonne and a leading voice on European lost sovereignty.
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The post When the EU Buries You Alive: Civil Death 2.0 appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.