Summary

This working paper offers a conceptualisation of information suppression, outlines its practices and suggests policies to address the phenomenon. It starts by examining how the EU addresses Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI) and highlights its insufficient response to information suppression. It first reviews key EU instruments, the EEAS FIMI threat reports, the Digital Services Act and the Democracy Shield, arguing that the privilege of disinformation over silencing of information and the exclusive focus on China and Russia as perpetrator states is preventing the EU from addressing FIMI in an efficient manner. Based on scholarship on information manipulation and the four case studies of the ARM project, the working paper conceptualises information suppression across production, dissemination and salience, including transnational effects on diasporas. It warns against an overbroad “FIMI-isation” that risks blocking merely undesirable content and securitising diaspora communities, thereby undermining fundamental rights. It calls for integrating information suppression into the FIMI Toolbox through better awareness, cross-institutional coordination and attention to transnational repression, so that EU policy can simultaneously counter foreign threats and protect freedom of expression and democratic participation in Europe.