Some of these European countries such as France are quite authoritarian. They frequently pass (update: propose/push for) laws to ban VPN and even social media, request access to private messages, etc. It seems to me the situation is equally bad in EU.
You have no idea what you are talking about, really. We don’t "frequently" pass such laws. Nobody is accessing private messages, even if there have been such attempts.
The EU has still the strongest privacy laws world wide, and in contrast to others a strong ethical foundation. It may be slow, it may be torn, it may be overly beaurocratic, but sure enough not authoritarian.
I don't think the french as a whole believe that. A lot of people in France are highly critical of the way the current government (and how it is more and more far right leaning) has been handling things in the last decade. There is a big issue of the police forces syndicates being highly far right biased which doesn't help.
None of the issues highlighted are because of the last decade of any alleged "far right leaning". In fact things have probably improved compared to a few decades ago.
