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As an European, I have problems understanding what you mean - could you clarify?
For example in the UK you may get jail time if you say a transgender girl is actually boy or whatever. See here one famous case: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna146065
That being said free speech is being eroded in the EU as well but the UK is “leading” that.
For example the EU tries for some time to mandate backdoors into encrypted chat applications.
"J.K. Rowling will not be arrested for comments about transgender women"
That's a famous (non-)case which completely disproves your assertion though.
"inflammatory posts on social media calling for hotels housing asylum seekers to be set alight"
I dunno, I think there's a bit of a gap between "mean stuff" and "racial hatred with an incitement to murder".
Saying a trans women is a boy is also gender hatred with possible catastrophic harm (as we know the suicide rate is pretty high on trans people). To be honest I would not be surprised at all to see people in jail for what JK Rowling said.
Ok but she wasn't even charged which suggests that people aren't going to be going to jail for saying what she said. I don't get how you take "she said some horrible stuff and wasn't charged" to "people will go to jail for saying the same thing" because there's no evidence or logical connection between the two stances.
I don't think there has. There's definitely been people locked up for tweeting[1] but that was less "mean" and more "overt racism".
(Before the Public Order Act 1986[2], Section 5 was amended in 2013, people were able to be charged for "insults" which was clearly ludicrous.)
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/mar/27/student-jailed-fa...
[2] Yet another thing to thank Thatcher for. Who, ironically, is probably a hero of the kind of people who go around saying things like "the left will lock you up for saying mean things."
Ignoring primitive racist aspects of the comments, no Europe as a whole (but lets say EU, Switzerland nor Norway don't care about this at all) doesn't have any force to speak of it can project, any clear plans for any military nor economical expansion of its influence outside its boundaries.
In contrary, we are currently weak (and eventually will get steamrolled by powerplayers from the east), undecisive, busy destroying some of the powerhouses of our economies like car industry. Germany is still terrified to the core for the sins of their grandfathers so would prefer half of Europe burning than do a nanometer aggressive move, and its the strongest voice on whole bloc - just look at how little they are actually helping Ukraine and how effectively they block any bigger attempts of other states. Heck they are trying to circumvent 2% GDP yearly NATO requirement to include highways maintenance costs in it, thus Wehrmacht is a joke - ie Polish army would steamroll them all any day, poles took a hard lesson from russian atrocities done on them in the past and finance army correspondingly.
Its sad to watch it, German population deserves much better leadership since competence is there. Not even digging into other big states like France with its own big issues, but at least they don't neglect military and are the only ones with nukes.