The US has accused the EU of censorship: Here’s how the bloc’s consensus machine works 

Brussels manufactured the Romanian election debacle and faces accusations of strangling the free speech of Europeans and Americans alike 

The Republican US House Judiciary Committee has published details of what it claims is a decade-long campaign by the European Commission to stifle online political speech, with barely-veiled threats used to stamp out memes, satire, and anything Brussels calls “disinformation.”

In a report published on Tuesday, the committee accused the EU of “directly infringing” on the free speech rights of Americans and Europeans alike by pressuring major social media platforms into censoring legal but “hateful” or otherwise problematic content. 

Drawing on policy documents, emails, and the minutes of closed-door meetings in Brussels, the report identified how voluntary meetings with tech executives quickly turned into mob-style shakedowns, with the threat of legal action and multimillion-euro fines dangled over the heads of platform chiefs.

The committee is set to hold a hearing on the EU’s censorship efforts on Wednesday. Ahead of the hearing, here’s a dive into what they uncovered.

When did EU censorship start?

The bloc’s censorship campaign began in earnest in 2015. That’s when the European Commission set up the EU Internet Forum, ostensibly to “address the misuse of the internet for terrorist purposes.” Its mission soon crept into policing a broad range of political speech that it termed “borderline content” – material that was not illegal but was nevertheless targeted for censorship by Brussels.

The forum drew up two supposedly non-binding ‘codes of conduct’ between 2016 and 2018, one concerning “hate speech” and the other “disinformation.” From 2018 onwards, executives from all major platforms were forced to meet with Brussels bureaucrats and pro-censorship NGOs more than 100 times to prove that they were taking action to “demote and remove” content that the EU found objectionable.

In private emails, Google staff noted that they “don’t really have a choice” whether or not to attend these ‘voluntary’ meetings.

Was the EU warned about censorship?

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At last year’s Munich Security Conference, US Vice President J.D. Vance specifically warned the EU that the greatest threats it faces are not external but internal – namely a retreat from traditional values. At the top of Vance’s list, he named freedom of speech. 

Vance accused European leaders of using “Soviet-era” terms such as “misinformation and disinformation” to silence political opposition. He criticized the annulment of elections in Romania and the prosecution of individuals for commentary in Germany, Sweden, and the UK. 

The vice president also warned that future US support for Europe would depend on whether governments actually uphold freedom of speech.

It seems the warning issued in Munich somehow didn’t reach Brussels. 

What kind of speech does the EU censor?

The EU has banned RT in all of its jurisdictions. In its handbook on “borderline content,” the EU Internet Forum recommended a wide range of content for monitoring, demotion, and deletion. This list included “populist rhetoric,” “anti-government/anti-EU” content, “anti-elite” content, “political satire,” “anti-migrants and Islamophobic content,” “anti-refugee/immigrant sentiment,” “anti-LGBTIQ” content, and “meme subculture.”

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The US House Judiciary Committee noted in its report that “these issues represent the dominant topics of European – indeed, global – political life today.”

When the Covid-19 pandemic hit in 2020, EU officials began pressing tech firms to “demote and remove” content skeptical of vaccines and lockdown measures, according to European Commission documents. At bimonthly meetings, the (mostly US) platforms were asked to “update [their] terms of service or content moderation practices” surrounding vaccines, long before the vaccines first hit the market.

“Vaccines will be our new focus on disinformation on covid,” the commission’s vice president, Vera Jourova, told TikTok executives in a call that November. When asked how it defined “disinformation,” the commission referred platforms to the Global Disinformation Index (GDI), a left-wing activist organization funded by George Soros, which organized advertiser boycotts of right-wing news sites in the US. 

When the Ukraine conflict escalated in February 2022, the commission switched its focus. Platforms were now pressured to “reduce disinformation on Ukraine in Central and Eastern Europe,” ensuring that audiences in these regions would not receive pro-Russian content. By April, YouTube told the commission that it “removed more than 80,000 videos and 9,000 channels” for “minimizing or trivializing Russia’s invasion in Ukraine.” 

What was meant by “trivializing” the conflict was never explained, but the answer appeared to satisfy the EU.

What is the DSA?

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Before the Digital Services Act (DSA) was passed in 2022, the EU counted on platforms adhering to its ‘voluntary’ codes of conduct. The act made these voluntary agreements legally binding. It allows the EU to fine tech platforms up to 6% of their global annual turnover if they fail to restrict the “dissemination of illegal content” and “address the spread of disinformation.”

The entire text of the DSA mentions the word “disinformation” 13 times without defining it.

EU officials repeatedly told tech executives that compliance with their nebulous ‘hate speech’ and ‘disinformation’ codes would protect them from enforcement under the DSA. The premise resembled a Mafia-style protection racket, with the deputy chief of the commission’s communications directorate telling platforms in 2024 that refusal to sign the codes of conduct “could be taken into account… when determining whether the provider is complying with the obligations laid down by the DSA.”

Threatened with legal action, TikTok rewrote its terms of service to ban “misinformation that undermines public trust,” “media presented out of context” and “misrepresent[ed] authoritative information.” As the Judiciary Committee noted in its report, “there is simply no way to enforce these rules fairly.”

“Before, we hoped for reputational damage on platforms, but we now have the law that we can apply,” EU regulator Prabhat Agarwal told Google staff in 2024.

Does the EU interfere in elections?

Since the DSA came into force in 2023, the European Commission has pressured platforms to censor content ahead of national elections in Slovakia, the Netherlands, France, Moldova, Romania, and Ireland, and during the EU elections in June 2024. The commission organized “rapid response systems,” which empowered pro-Brussels ‘fact checkers’ flag content for removal. Platforms that failed to remove this content would be punished with “enforcement actions” under the DSA, the commission explained at a meeting before the EU elections.

The most egregious case of EU meddling took place in Romania in 2024, when independent candidate Calin Georgescu won a shock first-round victory. Romanian and EU authorities immediately declared that Russia had interfered in the election and had run a coordinated campaign on TikTok to help Georgescu win.

TikTok found no evidence of Russian interference, and told the commission that it had actually been asked to censor pro-Georgescu content by authorities in Bucharest. This content included “disrespectful” posts that “insult the [ruling] PSD party.” Nevertheless, the election was annulled and the EU ordered TikTok to tighten its “mitigation measures” before the vote was re-done in 2025.

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Why do the Americans care?

Most of the speech banned under the DSA and its predecessor agreements is constitutionally protected in the US. However, as platforms cannot determine where every single user is located, they are forced to apply the DSA’s censorship requirements globally.

The European Commission has also deliberately targeted US content for censorship. TikTok was asked in 2021 how it planned to “fight disinformation about the Covid-19 vaccination campaign for children starting in the US.”

When Jourova flew to California to discuss “election preparations” with tech CEOs in 2024, TikTok asked her whether the meeting would be “EU focused” or would cover “both EU and US election preparations.” Jourova replied, “both.” Later that year, former EU Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton threatened X with retaliatory “measures” under the DSA if Elon Musk went ahead with a live interview with then-candidate Donald Trump in the US. 

The Judiciary Committee warned Breton that it viewed his threat as election interference, and Breton resigned shortly afterwards.

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