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Washington has barred former EU commissioner Thierry Breton and four others from entering the country over what it said was “censorship” and coercion of US social media platforms.
The visa ban follows a campaign of criticism and threats by the Trump administration over the EU’s Digital Services Act, which forces big tech companies to police content on their platforms more aggressively, and the Digital Markets Act, which aims to curb their power.
“For far too long, ideologues in Europe have led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to punish American viewpoints they oppose,” US secretary of state Marco Rubio said on X.
The US was taking steps to “bar leading figures of the global censorship-industrial complex from entering the United States. We stand ready and willing to expand this list if others do not reverse course.”
Breton was the EU’s commissioner for internal markets from 2019 to 2024. US under-secretary of state Sarah Rogers said he was being banned as the mastermind of the Digital Services Act and for his behaviour in telling X owner Elon Musk he needed to comply with rules on illegal content.
Breton responded by asking if the 1950s US era of “witch-hunts” against suspected communists was back.
French foreign minister Jean-Noël Barrot said: “France strongly condemns the visa restriction imposed by the United States on Thierry Breton, former minister and European commissioner, and four other European figures.
“The Digital Services Act was democratically adopted in Europe to ensure that what is illegal offline is also illegal online. It has absolutely no extraterritorial reach and in no way affects the United States.”
Rogers said the other people under sanctions were part of a “censorship-NGO ecosystem”.
Washington also banned four people from non-profit campaign groups that work to detect problematic, fake or violent content or hate speech online.
They are Imran Ahmed, head of the Center for Countering Digital Hate; Clare Melford, head of the Global Disinformation Index; Anna-Lena von Hodenberg, founder of HateAid; and Josephine Ballon, co-leader of HateAid.
President Donald Trump’s administration has demanded changes to EU tech rules and threatened to impose tariffs in retaliation for the bloc’s actions against Silicon Valley groups. The commission has said its tech regulations are non-negotiable and objectively applied.
In recent months, the commission has opened probes into Amazon and Microsoft’s dominance in the cloud sector, launched investigations into the artificial intelligence models of Google and Meta’s WhatsApp, and handed out a €120mn fine to Musk’s X for breaking digital transparency rules.
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