Abstract

In this article, we examine the argumentation employed by the Council of the European Union in order to adopt a wholly unprecedented sanction, aimed at suspending the transmission in the territory of the European Union of some Russian media outlets considered to be hostile. A new restrictive measure of this kind, which has no apparent link with the ability of the aggressor State to finance its war, required an unprecedented justification based on the existence of a «direct threat to the Union’s public order and security» and on the need to protect the «European civil society» from a campaign of «media manipulation and distortion of facts». In the article we try to provide an explanation of the concepts used by the Council of the European Union, of their explicit and implicit meaning and of their ability to narrowing the freedom of expression in the European context