Europe Dropped Its Plan to Make "Hate Speech" an EU Crime. Read the Fine Print. Mike Benz called this a "Big win for free speech in Europe." He's right, and the record backs it up. But it is narrower than the headlines, and the same document that kills the old plan opens the door to a new one. Who's who: Benz is a former State Department official who now runs the Foundation for Freedom Online, a group that tracks government-backed censorship. The post he quoted is from ADF International, the global arm of Alliance Defending Freedom, the Christian legal group that won Masterpiece Cakeshop and 303 Creative at the U.S. Supreme Court and now defends Christians charged over speech in Europe. What happened: on Nov. 4, the European Commission, the EU's unelected executive branch led by Ursula von der Leyen, published its 2027 work programme. Annex III lists proposals it will withdraw within six months. No. 14 is its Dec. 9, 2021 plan, "A more inclusive and protective Europe: extending the list of EU crimes to hate speech and hate crime." What that plan would have done: Article 83 of the EU's governing treaty lists "EU crimes" such as terrorism, human trafficking, drug trafficking and organised crime. For those, Brussels sets one minimum definition and penalty for all 27 countries. Adding "hate speech" would have let Brussels write that definition for all of them. Changing the list takes all 27 governments in the Council plus the European Parliament's consent. Why it died: Parliament endorsed it on Jan. 18, 2024 and asked to drop the unanimity rule. The Council never got unanimity. The Commission's stated reason: "Alignment with the discontinued work on the matter in Council." The record does not name which governments held out or why. ADF says free speech concerns; that is its account, not the Commission's. The fine print: 1. The next sentence says "the Commission is considering proposing a Directive on combating online incitement to violence and hatred." A directive is an EU law each country must copy into its own code. The vague word is "hatred." 2. Nothing was repealed. A 2008 EU rule, Framework Decision 2008/913, already requires every member state to criminalize public incitement to violence or hatred based on race, color, religion, descent or national or ethnic origin. 3. National laws stand. On April 7, 2026, Finland's Supreme Court convicted Päivi Räsänen, a Christian Democrat member of parliament and former interior minister, of "agitation against a population group" over the online posting of her 2004 church pamphlet, "Male and Female He Created Them," by the Luther Foundation Finland. The court threw out the charge over her 2019 post quoting the Bible against her church sponsoring Helsinki Pride, but fined her and ordered passages removed. Two lower courts had acquitted her. No EU crime list was needed. 4. The Digital Services Act, the EU law policing large platforms, is untouched. Under its 2025 hate speech code, participating platforms agree to review at least half of notices from approved monitoring groups within 24 hours. Fair difference: the €120 million fine on X in Dec. 2025 was for its blue checkmark, ad library and researcher data access, not for any post's content. My angle, as a Latter-day Saint: Doctrine and Covenants 134 (1835) says "the civil magistrate should restrain crime, but never control conscience." A crime needs a definition a citizen can read and obey. "Hatred" has none, so whoever enforces it decides. Fair questions before it moves: What exact words define "incitement to hatred"? Who decides? Will the text be public before a vote? Sources: europarl.europa.eu/legislati… korkeinoikeus.fi/en/news/new… digital-strategy.ec.europa.e… commission.europa.eu/strateg… Epoch Times, Nov. 10 Lenin wrote this kind of vague speech crime into his 1922 Criminal Code, telling his justice chief to word it "in the broadest possible manner." I covered it in Bolshevik 2.0 Part 8: xitter.twitterapi.xyz/brianskellenger/status… – at Meridian, ID