The European Union’s executive branch has warned it would respond to any “unjustified measures” after the US State Department barred five Europeans it accuses of pressuring American tech companies to censor or limit US viewpoints.
The European Commission, which supervises tech regulation in Europe, said it has requested clarification about the move.
A spokesperson for the commission said it “strongly” condemns the US decision, adding: “Freedom of expression is a fundamental right in Europe and a shared core value with the United States across the democratic world.”
The Europeans, who were labelled as “radical” activists by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, include the EU commissioner responsible for supervising social media rules, Thierry Breton.
Mr Breton, a former French finance minister, engaged in a social media dispute last year with tech billionaire Elon Musk over airing an online interview with Donald Trump in the months before the US election.
The other Europeans are Imran Ahmed, chief executive of the Centre for Countering Digital Hate, Josephine Ballon and Anna-Lena von Hodenberg, leaders of the German organisation HateAid, and Clare Melford, who runs the Global Disinformation Index.
Mr Rubio has said the five had advanced foreign government censorship campaigns against Americans and US companies, creating “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences” for the United States.
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“If needed, we will respond swiftly and decisively to defend our regulatory autonomy against unjustified measures,” the commission said in a statement, without elaborating.
“Our digital rules ensure a safe, fair, and level playing field for all companies, applied fairly and without discrimination,” it said.
EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the European Union will continue protecting freedom of speech.
“Freedom of speech is the foundation of our strong and vibrant European democracy. We are proud of it. We will protect it,” she said in a post on social media.
French President Emmanuel Macron said that the visa restrictions “amount to intimidation and coercion aimed at undermining European digital sovereignty”.
The EU’s digital rules were adopted by “a democratic and sovereign process” involving all member countries and the European Parliament, he said in a post on X.
Mr Macron said the rules “ensure fair competition among platforms, without targeting any third country” and that “the rules governing the European Union’s digital space are not meant to be determined outside Europe”.
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Mr Breton and the other Europeans were affected by a new visa policy announced in May that bars entry to foreigners accused of censoring protected speech in the United States.
Germany’s justice ministry said the two German activists had the government’s “support and solidarity” and that the visa bans on them were unacceptable.
“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.”
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A Global Disinformation Index spokesperson called the visa bans “an authoritarian attack on free speech and an egregious act of government censorship”.
“The Trump administration is, once again, using the full weight of the federal government to intimidate, censor, and silence voices they disagree with,” they said. “Their actions today are immoral, unlawful, and un-American.”
Breton is not the first French national to face sanctions from the Trump administration.
In August, Washington sanctioned French judge Nicolas Yann Guillou of the International Criminal Court over the tribunal’s actions against Israeli leaders and a past probe into US officials.
