French President Emmanuel Macron criticised the Trump
administration for imposing visa bans on European campaigners fighting
disinformation and hate.
The French president attacked Washington's action, calling
it "intimidation."
Imran Ahmed, the British CEO of the US-based Center for
Countering Digital Hate, was one of five activists whose visas were banned by
the United States.
Morgan McSweeney, Sir Keir Starmer's No. 10 chief of staff,
was one of its founding directors.
Prior to this year's first trade agreement with the United
States, the Prime Minister has refrained from criticizing Trump and his
administration in an effort to preserve strong US-UK relations.
The British government had not yet responded to the visa
restrictions by midday.
However, Mr. Macron was not holding back, emphasizing in
particular the suspension on former European Union commissioner Thierry
Breton's visa.
Mr. Breton was one of the designers of the EU's Digital
Services Act, a historic piece of legislation that has angered US authorities
and aims to make the internet safer.
The French president messaged on social media platform X:
“France condemns the visa restriction measures taken by the United States against Thierry Breton and four other European figures.
These measures amount to intimidation and coercion aimed at undermining European digital sovereignty.
Together with the European Commission and our European partners, we will continue to defend our digital sovereignty and our regulatory autonomy.”
Despite Vice President JD Vance and other senior Trump
officials lecturing Europe on the value of free speech, the US government took
this action.
Seeking to defend the bans, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said:
“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.”
Five European people, including Mr. Breton, were denied visas
by Trump's government on Tuesday. The administration claims that these
individuals are attempting to restrict free speech or unfairly target US IT
companies with excessively onerous regulations.
The US decision was sharply denounced by the European
Commission.
The rising divisions between Washington and several European
capitals on topics including trade, immigration, free speech, defense,
Far-Right politics, and Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine are expected to worsen
as a result of the visa restrictions.
They follow a warning in a US National Security Strategy
paper that Europe faces "civilizational erasure" and needs to alter
its trajectory if it is to continue being a trustworthy friend of the United
States.
The blueprint, which would represent a significant change in
US foreign policy, was welcomed by the Kremlin, which described it as
"largely consistent" with Moscow's agenda.
Elon Musk's X platform was fined €120 million (£105 million)
by the European Commission earlier this month for violating online content
regulations, which has particularly infuriated US officials.
Breton and Tesla CEO Musk have frequently engaged in online
arguments over EU tech regulations, with Musk calling Breton the "tyrant
of Europe."
Additionally, the US millionaire has entered European
politics by endorsing Far-Right leader Tommy Robinson and criticizing Sir Keir
Starmer.
Additionally, he has backed Germany's Far-Right AfD party.
According to US Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy Sarah
Rogers, the visa restrictions also targeted Mr. Ahmed, Clare Melford,
co-founder of the Global Disinformation Index, and Anna-Lena von Hodenberg and
Josephine Ballon of the German non-profit HateAid.
In order to make the internet a safer place, the EU's
Digital Services Act requires tech companies to take more action against
illicit content, such as hate speech and images of child sexual abuse.
Washington has claimed that the DSA unfairly targets US tech
companies and US persons, and that the EU was pursuing "undue" limits
on freedom of expression in its efforts to combat hate speech, misinformation,
and disinformation.
The most well-known target was Breton, a former French
finance minister who served as the European commissioner for the internal
market from 2019 to 2024.
“Is McCarthy’s witch hunt back?”
he wrote on X.
“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.”
The two German activists had the government's "support
and solidarity," according to Germany's justice ministry, which also
stated that HateAid helped those impacted by illegal online hate speech and
that the visa restrictions on them were intolerable.
“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.”
The visa restrictions are "an authoritarian attack on
free speech and an egregious act of government censorship," according to a
Global Disinformation Index representative.
“The Trump Administration is, once again, using the full weight of the federal government to intimidate, censor, and silence voices they disagree with,”
it said.
“Their actions today are immoral, unlawful, and un-American.”
How could visa bans affect upcoming EU US negotiations on tech?
Visa bans on European officers could significantly
complicate forthcoming EU- US tech accommodations by eroding trust, egging
retaliatory measures, and stalling addresses on data flows, AI norms, and the
Digital requests Act( DMA).
Particular bans targeting numbers like Thierry Breton hamper
direct engagement, forcing reliance on lower- position diplomats and risking
escalation where EU envoys face U.S. entry walls, mirroring the current impasse
seen in previous Trump- period spats over digital levies.
Conversations on collective recognition of tech rules or safe harbors for U.S. enterprises under DSA could be induced, with Brussels withholding concessions on forfeitures for platforms like Meta or Google; heightened rhetoric from Macron and von der Leyen may lead to WTO forms or complementary U.S. functionary bans.