The French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the European Union have accused Washington of “coercion and intimidation”, after the US imposed a visa ban on five prominent European figures who have been at heart of the campaign to introduce laws regulating American tech giants.
The visa bans were imposed on Tuesday on Thierry Breton, a former EU commissioner and one of the architects of the bloc’s Digital Services Act (DSA), and four anti-disinformation campaigners, including two in Germany and two in the UK.
The move also targeted Imran Ahmed, the British chief executive of the US-based Center for Countering Digital Hate; Anna-Lena von Hodenberg and Josephine Ballon of the German non-profit HateAid; and Clare Melford, co-founder of the Global Disinformation Index.
Justifying the visa bans, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, wrote on X: “For far too long, ideologues in Europe have led organised efforts to coerce American platforms to punish American viewpoints they oppose. The Trump administration will no longer tolerate these egregious acts of extraterritorial censorship.”
The DSA is seen by Washington as a form of censorship while European leaders say the regulations are necessary to control hate speech, but the row threatens to become part of a far wider existing cultural and political conflict between Donald Trump’s administration and Europe. Artificial Intelligence and digital technologies were always likely to become a major theatre of confrontation between the US and Europe, as these technologies become ever more central to wielding power.
Macron condemned the visa ban in furious terms. “These measures amount to intimidation and coercion aimed at undermining European digital sovereignty,” he wrote, also on X. “The European Union’s digital regulations were adopted following a democratic and sovereign process by the European Parliament and the Council. They apply within Europe to ensure fair competition among platforms, without targeting any third country, and to ensure that what is illegal offline is also illegal online. The rules governing the European Union’s digital space are not meant to be determined outside Europe”.
The French foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, said: “The peoples of Europe are free and sovereign and cannot let the rules governing their digital space be imposed by others upon them.”
Breton, a former French finance minister and the European commissioner for the internal market from 2019 to 2024, said: “Is McCarthy’s witch-hunt back?
“As a reminder: 90% of the European parliament – our democratically elected body – and all 27 member states unanimously voted the DSA. To our American friends: censorship isn’t where you think it is.”
A European Commission spokesperson said: “If needed, we will respond swiftly and decisively to defend our regulatory autonomy against unjustified measures,”
The EU insists its move is designed to make the online environment safer, in part by compelling tech giants to do more to tackle illegal content, including hate speech and child sexual abuse material.
Washington has taken a different view, claiming the EU is pursuing “undue” restrictions on freedom of expression in its efforts to combat hateful speech, misinformation and disinformation, and that the DSA unfairly targets US tech giants and US citizens.
Elon Musk’s X platform was fined €120m (£104m) by the EU for breaching online content rules.
Breton was replaced in the internal market role at the EU by another French politician, Stéphane Séjourné, who is the Commission’s executive vice-president. Séjourné expressed his support for his predecessor saying: “No sanction will silence the sovereignty of the European peoples. Total solidarity with him and all the people of Europe affected by this”.
Outlining the bans on Tuesday, US under secretary for public diplomacy, Sarah Rogers, classified Breton as a “mastermind” of the DSA.
Germany’s justice ministry said the two German campaigners had the government’s “support and solidarity” and the visa bans were unacceptable, adding that HateAid supported people affected by unlawful digital hate speech.
“Anyone who describes this as censorship is misrepresenting our constitutional system,” it said in a statement. “The rules by which we want to live in the digital space in Germany and in Europe are not decided in Washington.”
Dennis Radtke, an MEP and member of the German ruling CDU, said: “The Trump fans in Europe defend this as a fight for freedom of speech. Where exactly has an opinion been suppressed? Where is the fight for freedom of speech with regard to China and Russia? It’s only about business here and the fight against the rule of law.”
Raphaël Glucksmann, a French socialist MEP in a message to Rubio, said: “For far too long, Europe has been weak in implementing its own laws and defending its own interests. You have chosen to cosy up tyrants and confront democracies. The time has come for us to stand up. Kneel as much as you want in front of Putin, we are the free world now.
“We are not a colony of the United States. We are Europeans, we must defend our laws, our principles, our interests. This scandalous sanction against Thierry Breton pays tribute to his fight for our sovereignty. We will continue it together. To the end.”
The row is the latest to showcase tensions between the US and Europe. In August, Washington imposed sanctions on the French judge Nicolas Yann Guillou, who sits on the international criminal court, for the tribunal’s targeting of Israeli leaders and a past decision to investigate US officials.
Michel Duclos, a former senior French diplomat and resident senior fellow in geopolitics and diplomacy at the Institut Montaigne thinktank lamented the move, referencing Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev’s recent trip to Miami for talks on the Ukraine war. “Dmitriev celebrated in Miami, Breton denied US visa: Europe is becoming the new Russia for Washington. It brings to mind the 1920s – America favouring the former enemy [Germany) against its former allies – but worse.”
The German Journalists’ Association chairperson, Mika Beuster expressed, solidarity with the Berlin-based HateAid. “This is censorship in its purest form, the likes of which we have previously only known from autocratic regimes,” said Beuster.