The watchdogs of EU democracy will have to be "much louder in the future" if they hope to see off a mounting threat from homegrown populists and autocrats who are chipping away at Europe's founding commitments to free speech and the rule of law, a top EU official has warned. "We have to make sure, wherever democracy is under threat, [where there is] shrinking space of civil society, then we have to raise our voices," Oliver Röpke, the newly elected president of the European Economic and Social Committee, an advisory body within the European Union, told FRANCE 24.
Röpke, an activist for union rights who previously served as head of the EESC Workers' Group, succeeded his fellow Austrian, Christa Schweng, in April at the helm of the 65-year-old Committee that bills itself as a gateway for democracy and fundamental rights in the 27-member bloc.
