EU Parliament Blames Russia for Growing Euroskeptic Influence

In an effort to assign blame for the growing Euroskeptic parties across the union, the European Parliament today passed a resolution blaming “hostile” Russian media outlets like RT and Sputnik for a “disinformation” campaign that makes the EU look like it’s failing.

The bill backed a committee report that said Russia was intentionally trying to provoke doubt in both the European Union and North America, expressing “strong criticism” of Russia and urging the European Union to do something non-specific about it.

The vote passed 304-179 with 208 abstentions, with a lot of centrists abstaining and the no votes mostly coming from Euroskeptic parties as well as members of the far right and far left parties. A French National Front MEP called the resolution “European propaganda,” while the far-left accused it of being “neo-McCarthyism” intent on justifying a crackdown on media freedom.

After the Brexit vote, Euroskeptic parties across the EU gained a massive boost, with a number of other nations seeing such ambitions as no longer impossible. The committee report, however, downplays the Brexit’s influence, suggesting more people are against the EU because they heard Russians saying bad things about it.

Blaming Russia for anything and everything is increasingly fashionable in the West, with the US presidential election built heavily around the narrative that Russia was plotting to rig it, and French and German officials both suggesting that their own upcoming elections are probably also going to end up being Russian plots. In the German vote in particular, a Euroskeptic party, the AfD, is expected to gain considerably.