The EU executive on Tuesday, February 3, strongly rejected accusations made in a US congressional report that it had forced social media platforms to censor American content.
In a scathing 160-page report, the Republican-dominated judiciary committee of the House of Representatives claimed the European Commission had spent 10 years trying to “censor the global internet” and American citizens’ speech.
The report’s release came on the eve of a hearing by the committee chaired by President Donald Trump ally Jim Jordan, entitled “Europe’s Threat to American Speech and Innovation, Part II.”
The accusations drew a strong rebuke from the EU. “On the latest censorship allegations. Pure nonsense. Completely unfounded,” EU digital affairs spokesman Thomas Regnier said.
A first report by the House committee last year took aim at the EU’s legal armory, especially its 2023 content law, the Digital Services Act – which Trump’s administration accuses of discriminating against US firms.
The new report described the DSA as “the culmination of a decade-long European effort to silence political opposition and suppress online narratives that criticize the political establishment.”
It claimed that during the Covid pandemic, commission “officials pressed platforms to change their content moderation rules to globally censor content questioning established narratives about the virus and the vaccine,” citing emails as evidence. And it accused Brussels of pressuring platforms to “censor content” in a string of EU national elections since the DSA’s adoption, as well as the 2024 European Parliament elections.
The Trump-allied tech tycoon Elon Musk cheered the release of the report in an X post entitled “Tyrants love censorship.”
But the EU’s Regnier pushed back, pointing to online platforms’ ability to “algorithmically influence elections” and Europe’s efforts to ensure “free and fair elections.”
“Freedom of expression is a fundamental right in Europe,” Regnier said, adding that the DSA “is protecting that right against big tech.”
