Social media companies including X and Meta have sided with Trump, constituting a direct threat to European democracy, according to European Commission Executive VP Henna Virkkunen. Brussels will use and expand all available tools to counter these threats by enforcing more thorough fact-checking and anti-hate speech laws, she vowed on Tuesday, January 21st, while opening a parliamentary debate on the topic in the Strasbourg plenary.
Seeking to placate the leftist MEPs enraged by watching Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg share the podium at Trump’s inauguration the day before, the commissioner did not hold back when outlining Brussels’ vision for cracking down on online free speech.
Among others, Virkkunen pledged to double the Commission staff working on the enforcement of the European Union’s infamous online censorship tool, the Digital Services Act (DSA), to a team of 200 by the end of 2025; while also working more closely with local DSA coordinators in member states that have upcoming elections this year to prevent further “interference” like the Musk-Weidel interview on X.
The Commission will also start updating its current anti-hate speech regulations, “so that hate speech is flagged and assessed 24 hours, and removed when necessary.” Moreover, it will also take the additional “voluntary” anti-hate speech and misinformation frameworks and fully integrate them into the DSA so that they eventually become legally binding and enforceable.
“It cannot be stressed enough that the DSA does not censor content,” the commissioner said, before immediately contradicting herself:
It creates efficient mechanisms for the removal of illegal content defined by the EU or other national laws, such as illegal hate speech. Because what is illegal offline, is also illegal online.
It’s also clear that the DSA alone will not be enough to prevent foreign interference, Virkkunen said. The Commission, therefore, is working on a new framework, called the European Democracy Shield (EDS), which will employ and equip more “independent” fact-checkers and NGOs to
combat foreign information manipulation, interference, and disinformation; to strengthen the EU’s ability to detect, analyze, and proactively counter threats; and to also address domestic threats to democracy.
Virkkunen said the EU was “extremely committed” to protecting democracy from interference such as the ones posed by X’s allegedly biased algorithms or Russia’s alleged TikTok campaign in Romania—both of which are yet to be proved, while at least part of the Romanian campaign turned out to be paid by an EPP-member establishment party—and will use “all available tools” to prevent similar attacks in the future.
Still not enough for the left
If the ensuing three-hour debate in the European Parliament (EP) showed anything, it was that nothing terrifies the left more than the freedom of expression and losing the ability to control the narrative.
One by one, leftist parties (including von der Leyen’s centrist EPP) came out in support of more extreme measures and thorough legal enforcement. Most of the leftist MEPs who participated were not satisfied with Virkkunen’s promises and called for the Commission to go further both in terms of censorship and punishment of social media networks under the law.
“We need to end the abuses of these tech oligarchs,” socialist S&D leader Iratxe García Pérez declared. According to her, Elon Musk’s X “has become a loudspeaker for the extreme right by supporting Trump and Weidel by hoaxes and messages of hate,” while Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to ditch politically biased fact-checkers from Facebook—after admitting to government pressure from Biden—“is simply promoting lies and manipulation.”
“There is no other alternative,” the socialist MEP said, “we must end social media companies that do not comply with the law.”
The Greens’ keynote speaker, Alexandra Geese, presented three recommendations from her party: launching an urgent investigation into social media algorithms; protecting elections by (at least temporarily) banning “recommended” functions on sites like X and Facebook; and sending “a clear signal” to Trump-aligned tech CEOs by providing EU support to “better” social media platforms such as Bluesky or Mastodon.
Geese then accidentally admitted what the rule of law in Brussels truly means. “Commissioner, ten days ago you told German media there is no proof of Elon Musk interfering with the algorithms,” she said to Virkkunen:
That is true, but that’s the great thing about Europe, the DSA, and your job: you are the one who can prove it and you are the only one in the world who can build a legal, sound, and court-proof case.
In other words, make up the laws and then prove in your own court that they were broken, simple as.
But nothing demonstrated how much (or little) free speech and democratic debate are respected in the EP than what came next. Leftist MEPs began loudly booing as soon as Milan Uhrík—vice-chair of the AfD-led Europe of Sovereign Nations (ESN) group—started speaking about the U.S. government’s proven political censorship on Twitter. When he asked them to “shut up” so he could finish the speech, his mic was immediately cut off by EP President Roberta Metsola for using disrespectful language. Metsola then ordered him to leave the stage, earning applause from the left.
“The emperor is naked”
Right-wing MEPs, however, were not so easy to gaslight, especially since many of them encountered censorship and shadow-banning on social media for their political views in the past.
French MEP Virginie Joron (RN) from the national conservative Patriots for Europe (PfE) group began by saying that the “Digital Surveillance Act” was all about political control, urging the Commission not to give in to the demands of “bad losers” on the left. She said this outrage over Trump and tech CEOs shows that Europe is “an ossified continent frightened of power, rotten to the core, and incapable of admitting defeat.”
Nicola Procaccini (FdI), the chairman of the more centrist European Conservative and Reformist (ECR) group was of the opinion that the DSA was still beneficial if it was “used correctly” and without bias, but agreed with the Patriots that the entire debate about cracking down free speech was a sign that “the loss of their political dominion on social media is driving the left crazy.”
The ESN’s Christine Anderson (AfD), however, stressed that DSA and other undemocratic tools of information control “must go.”
“They [Musk and Zuckerberg] don’t want to censor their platforms at the behest of governments and you’re hyperventilating,” the German MEP told her leftist colleagues. “You are terrified of free speech, worried that your power will be toppled,” she said. “The emperor’s fine new clothes only exist in places where there is no freedom of expression. With free speech, the emperor is naked, just as you all are.”
It’s a proven fact—as Zuckerberg admitted it—that Facebook engaged in political censorship under duress from the Biden administration, Hungarian MEP Csaba Dömötör (Fidesz/PfE) pointed out later. “The dirty work was done by fact-checkers, and the pretext was the fight against fake news.” The MEP said the Patriots group proposed a separate debate on this fact, but it was voted down by the center-left establishment, the “very beneficiaries of this censorship.”
“How absurd is that in America, the fact-checkers are being chased away, but in Europe, they continue to operate,” Dömötör said, noting that most ‘professional’ fact-checking organizations are heavily tied to and funded by Democrat-linked organizations in the U.S.—a much clearer picture of “interference” than anything Brussels is complaining about.
“They are not just censoring politicians, they are censoring voters,” he said. “Tens of millions of voters who do not want immigration, who are fed up with ideological madness, and who want Europe to stand on its own feet.”
