I remember standing in the atrium of the National Palace of Culture in Sofia, listening to the murmur of a dozen languages drifting between the coffee stands and the registration desks. It felt strange, but encouraging. For years, I had been one of the people who flew to Brussels to attend meetings, to sit in rectangular conference rooms, to nod along to interpreters speaking forty languages. But that day in July, the European Economic and Social Committee had come to us. We, the Economic and Social Council of Bulgaria, had co-hosted the Connecting EU seminar. It was not just a logistic success. It was a quiet recognition that organised civil society in this part of Europe matters. We were not the largest or the loudest of the EU’s institutional family, but we had earned our seat at the table. For me, it felt like a culmination of decades of work. And yet, the joy of that moment was shadowed by a deeper anxiety, because everyone who had gathered there knew that we were not celebrating a victory. We were preparing for a battle.
For my generation, the words peace and democracy were as natural and as unnoticed as the air we breathed. I was a student when the Berlin Wall came down. I never thought for a minute that I would see war on European soil again. But today, I open my news feed and I see images of soldiers, of bombed-out blocks of flats, of civilians hiding in metro stations. War is not a ghost of our grandparents’ past; it is a present reality, just a few hours away from Sofia by plane or by road. And with that physical war comes a quieter, more insidious kind of attack. Not against our cities, but against our minds. We see the rise of voices challenging democratic values, not from beyond the borders of Europe, but from within. Voices that twist every discussion, exploit every grievance, and plant seeds of doubt in every public institution. The bullets are being fired, but so are the lies, and the latter can often cause more permanent damage to the democracy we hold dear.
This is why, when I speak about the threat of disinformation, I am not using an abstract diplomatic term. I am speaking about what I see in my own country, my own neighbourhood, and, at times, my own family. Disinformation is no longer a weapon of shadowy foreign agents alone—though, do not mistake me, they are still out there. It has become something more dangerous: it has become a cottage industry, a folk art, a spider’s web in which every strand is a half-truth or a complete falsehood. We see false narratives spread faster than verified facts. We see ordinary people sharing a headline from a fake news site to their entire contact list, because it confirms what they already believe. We see deepfakes, those terrifyingly realistic videos, adding new fuel to the fire. And we see the consequences. Social divisions deepen. Trust in democratic institutions erodes. People start doubting not just the facts, but the very possibility of facts. They start believing that there is no truth, only opinions. In that world, democracy cannot survive. Because democracies are built on informed citizens, and an informed citizen first needs to be able to tell the sun from the shadow.
That is why the role of organised civil society has never been more vital. It is not merely about bringing trade unions and employer associations into the same room—although that in itself is no small feat. It is about providing a space where dialogue can take place in a civilised way, based on evidence, expertise and, crucially, a willingness to listen. I have seen this happen time and time again at the Bulgarian Economic and Social Council. At one end of the table, you have a trade unionist who is worried about wage stagnation. At the other, an employer who fears increased labour costs will drive them out of business. They look at the same set of economic data and see two different futures. But we refuse to let them walk out and talk to the media, hurling accusations. We make them sit down, and we make them talk. And slowly, they begin to realise that their interests—the country’s competitiveness, the workers’ livelihoods, the long-term sustainability of economic policy—are not as different as they first thought. This does not just lead to better policy. It leads to public trust. And trust, I have come to believe, is one of the most powerful weapons we hold against the propaganda machine.
The prime example of this for us was the debate over Bulgaria’s accession to the euro area. It was a debate that should have been, at its heart, a technical one: an exchange rate, a set of rules, a decision about printing new money and handing it over to the National Bank. But what unfolded was a festival of disinformation. Every night, television talk shows were filled with panicked landowners claiming their savings would evaporate, that their pensions would be frozen, that the nation was selling its sovereignty to globalist bankers in dark suits. Some of this was a genuine, if misplaced, fear of losing a national symbol—the lev has been a source of pride through thick and thin. But much of it was deliberate mischief, engineered by those who saw political advantage in chaos. At the Council, we were faced with a dilemma. If we kept silent, we would leave the field open to the fabulists. If we jumped into the fray with a crude government campaign, we would only give ammunition to the naysayers who accused the state of brainwashing.
So we chose a different path. We published data. We organised public meetings not in elegant hotels, but in community centres in small towns, where ordinary people could come and ask us directly: explain to me, in plain language, exactly what will happen to my savings when the euro arrives. We did not try to persuade people with slogans; we armed them with facts. We explained the exchange rate, not in abstract percentages, but in concrete terms: if you have 100 lev, you will have 51.13 euros, and we showed them the maths. We brought in European economists who had lived through the introduction of the euro in other Eastern European countries and could describe it, not as a miracle or a disaster, but as what it was: a simple administrative step. And above all, we told the truth. When there was uncertainty, we said so. When we didn’t know something, we admitted it. We did not always succeed. You cannot out-fact every myth, especially when that myth is repeated with the desperate you’re-ignorant-for-believing-us tone of the true believer. But we established ourselves as a reliable source. And in the fight against disinformation, being reliable is more than half the battle.
Still, it would be naive to think that citizens can be equipped once, like a certificate, and then left alone. The digital landscape changes every day. A grandparent who learned to use the internet to read the newspaper is now retired and scrolling through social media, disconnected from any journalistic filter. A student who grew up in the era of fake news has developed a shrewd suspicion of anything that comes from the authorities, but is often completely credulous when the same falsehood is served up by an influencer with a thousand followers. This is why education, particularly media literacy, is not a luxury; it is a fundamental requirement for modern democracy. We need to teach children how to evaluate sources—not just how to use a search engine, but how to ask whether this website is legitimate, who created this image, why this video is being shown to them. Critical thinking cannot be reduced to a few hours of class time. It must be woven into everything they study, in history, in science, in art. They need to understand that statistics can be manipulated, that appealing to emotion is a rhetorical tactic, and that a correction, issued halfway down an article, does not necessarily repair the damage already done.
But even with this training, no one should expect ordinary citizens to wade through the swamp alone. Institutions, the media, and experts all have a responsibility to be clearer, more transparent, and more patient. We are not doing anyone a favour by lecturing from on high. The days when a minister could issue a communiqué and expect the public to simply fall in line are long gone. We have to engage in the messy, chaotic, and often frustrating work of conversation. That means going to the guest that the show invited to shout their conspiracy theory. It means treating with respect a person who is deeply concerned about the price of bread and claims that the EU is plotting against them. It means resisting the urge to mock. Because the moment you treat somebody like a fool, you have lost them. They will seek out their news from someone who treats them like an intelligent adult, even if that someone is manipulating them.
Recently, someone asked me how I keep going in the face of so much opposition, so much denialism, so much sheer unreasonableness. I have to admit, at the end of a long day, my heart can sink. But then I think about the neighbourhood meeting in a small Bulgarian town, where a woman approached me after the euro information session and said, “Look, I still don’t like it. But at least now I understand it. So maybe I’m a little less afraid.” That, to me, is the mission. It’s not about convincing everyone to agree with us. It’s about giving people the tools to make a decision based on facts rather than fear. It’s about creating a society where the loudest voice is not necessarily the most convincing one, and where a lie, no matter how many times it is repeated, will ultimately be exposed for the weakness that it is.
As I look around at Europe today, at the crisis-torn meetings and the exhausted negotiators, I remind myself of something worth holding on to. The institutions of the European Union are often regarded as bureaucratic monoliths. But they are also the framework within which we have managed, for seventy years, to keep the peace and to build a common destiny. Civil society is the connective tissue that keeps this body human. It is the voice of the teacher, the nurse, the small business owner, the farmer, and the factory worker. When we join forces, when we combine our expertise and our shared respect for fact and for one another, we are, in effect, building a fortress around the very concept of democracy. Reliable information is not simply a means of communication. It is the cornerstone of our entire way of life. And as long as we hold on to it, as long as we defend it, we will not be swayed by those who seek to confuse and to divide. We will stand in the light, and we will be heard.