Europeans

BRUSSELS — The European Union’s executive arm on Wednesday warned that it would take action against any “unjustified measures” after the U.S. State Department barred five Europeans it accuses of pressuring U.S. technology firms to censor or suppress American viewpoints.

The Europeans were characterized by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio as “radical” activists and “weaponized” nongovernmental organizations. They include the former EU commissioner responsible for supervising social media rules, Thierry Breton.

Breton, a businessman and former French finance minister, clashed last year on social media with tech billionaire Elon Musk over broadcasting an online interview with Donald Trump in the months leading up to the U.S. election.

The European Commission, the EU’s powerful executive branch and which supervises tech regulation in Europe, said that it “strongly condemns the U.S. decision to impose travel restrictions” and that it has requested clarification about the move. French President Emmanuel Macron also condemned it.

“If needed, we will respond swiftly and decisively to defend our regulatory autonomy against unjustified measures,” the commission said in a statement, without elaborating.

Rubio wrote in an X post on Tuesday that “for far too long, ideologues in Europe have led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to punish American viewpoints they oppose.”

“The Trump Administration will no longer tolerate these egregious acts of extraterritorial censorship,” he posted.

The European Commission countered that “the EU is an open, rules-based single market, with the sovereign right to regulate economic activity in line with our democratic values and international commitments.”

“Our digital rules ensure a safe, fair, and level playing field for all companies, applied fairly and without discrimination,” it said.

Macron said that the visa restrictions “amount to intimidation and coercion aimed at undermining European digital sovereignty,” he posted on X.

Macron said that the EU’s digital rules were adopted by “a democratic and sovereign process” involving all member countries and the European Parliament. He said that the rules “ensure fair competition among platforms, without targeting any third country.”

He underlined that “the rules governing the European Union’s digital space are not meant to be determined outside Europe.”

Breton and the group of Europeans fell afoul of a new visa policy announced in May to restrict the entry of foreigners deemed responsible for censorship of protected speech in the United States.

The four others are: Imran Ahmed, chief executive of the Centre for Countering Digital Hate; Josephine Ballon and Anna-Lena von Hodenberg, leaders of HateAid, a German organization; and Clare Melford, who runs the Global Disinformation Index.

Rubio said the five had advanced foreign government censorship campaigns against Americans and U.S. companies, which he said created “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences” for the United States.

The action to bar them from the U.S. is part of a Trump administration campaign against foreign influence over online speech, using immigration law rather than platform regulations or penalties.

In a post on X on Tuesday, Sarah Rogers, the U.S. under secretary of state for public diplomacy, called Breton the “mastermind” behind the EU’s Digital Services Act, which imposes a set of strict requirements designed to keep internet users safe online. This includes flagging harmful or illegal content like hate speech.

Breton responded on X by noting that all 27 EU member countries voted for the Digital Services Act in 2022. “To our American friends: ‘Censorship isn’t where you think it is,’” he wrote.

Cook writes for the Associated Press. AP journalist Angela Charlton contributed to this report from Paris.

The United States has imposed visa bans on five Europeans, including a former European Union commissioner, accusing them of pressuring tech firms to censor and suppress “American viewpoints they oppose”.

In a statement on Tuesday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio characterised the individuals as “radical activists” who had “advanced censorship crackdowns” by foreign states against “American speakers and American companies”.

“For far too long, ideologues in Europe have led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to punish American viewpoints they oppose,” he said on X.

“The Trump Administration will no longer tolerate these egregious acts of extraterritorial censorship,” he added.

The most prominent target was Thierry Breton, who served as the European commissioner for the internal market from 2019-2024.

Sarah Rogers, the undersecretary for public diplomacy, described the French businessman as the “mastermind” of the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), a landmark law intended to combat ​hateful speech, misinformation and disinformation on online platforms.

Rogers also accused Breton of using the DSA to threaten Elon Musk, the owner of X and a close ally of US President Donald Trump, ahead of an interview Musk conducted with Trump during last year’s presidential campaign.

‘Witch hunt’

Breton responded to the visa ban in a post on X, slamming it as a “witch hunt” and comparing the situation with the US’s McCarthy era, when officials were chased out of government for alleged ties to communism.

“To our American friends: Censorship isn’t where you think it is,” he added.

The others named by Rogers are: Imran Ahmed, chief executive of the Centre for Countering Digital Hate; Josephine Ballon and Anna-Lena von Hodenberg, leaders of HateAid, a German organisation, and Clare Melford, who runs the Global Disinformation Index (GDI).

French Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs Jean-Noel Barrot “strongly” condemned the visa restrictions, stating that the EU “cannot let the rules governing their digital space be imposed by others upon them”. He stressed that the DSA was “democratically adopted in Europe” and that “it has absolutely no extraterritorial reach and in no way affects the United States”.

Ballon and von Holdenberg of HateAid described the visa bans as an attempt to obstruct the enforcement of European law on US corporations operating in Europe.

“We will not be ‌intimidated by a government that uses accusations of censorship to silence those who stand ⁠up for human rights and freedom of expression,” they said in a statement.

A spokesperson for the GDI also called the US action “immoral, unlawful, and un-American”, as well as “an authoritarian attack on free speech and an egregious act of government censorship”.

The punitive measures follow the Trump administration’s publishing of a National Security Strategy, which accused European leaders of censoring free speech and suppressing opposition to immigration policies that it said risk “civilisational erasure” for the continent.

The DSA in particular has emerged as a flashpoint in US-EU relations, with US conservatives decrying it as a weapon of censorship against right-wing thought in Europe and beyond, an accusation Brussels denies.

The legislation requires major platforms to explain content-moderation decisions, provide transparency for users and grant researchers access to study issues such as children’s exposure to dangerous content.

Tensions escalated further this month after the EU fined Musk’s X for violating DSA rules on transparency in advertising and its methods for ensuring users were verified and actual people.

Washington last week signalled that key European businesses – including Accenture, DHL, Mistral, Siemens and Spotify – could be targeted in response.

The US has also attacked the United Kingdom’s Online Safety Act, which imposes similar content moderation requirements on major social media platforms.

The White House last week suspended the implementation of a tech cooperation deal with the UK, saying it was in opposition to the UK’s tech rules.