A series of corporate lawsuits, power struggles within the European Commission, and the tricky matter of how to regulate content related to the Israel-Gaza war is threatening to scuttle the full rollout of the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) this weekend, regarded by critics as Brussels’ primary censorship tool ahead of June’s European elections.
Tailored to give both the EU and national governments the ability to regulate Big Tech through a system of rules and fines from Saturday onward, it will require member states to monitor social media content through designated agencies. In turn, these will be ready to liaise with social media platforms about removing content upon demand.
While the DSA has been lambasted by free speech advocates as a restraint on free expression, Brussels sees the Act as a regulatory tool to manage largely American Big Tech firms and, in effect, become the global content regulator.
The EU’s ambitions to be world-leading on censoring online speech seem far-fetched, however, given that the DSA’s surveillance techniques haven’t had much success so far. During November’s Dublin riots, the regulations were not activated—because officials were at dinner. Eurocrats also unsuccessfully attempted to use the Act to stop the dissemination of Tucker Carlson’s recent interview with Vladimir Putin.
Similarly, the Hamas terror attacks on October 7th caught EU regulators totally by surprise, with the Commission forced to outsource its regulation to third parties due to a lack of understanding of the conflict.
The latest challenge to the full implementation of the DSA appears to be the EU itself with Politico—Brussels’ unofficial gossip column—describing an apparent rivalry between Thierry Breton, Macronist Commissioner for the Internal Market, and transparency Commissioner Věra Jourová. The pair disagree over appropriate sanctions for tech companies over their handling of the online aftermath of the October 7th attacks.
According to anonymous insiders, Jourová and her department are annoyed at Breton’s overuse of X, formerly Twitter, to chastise social media platforms ahead of the implementation. Additional rivalry was reported between EU officials about which bureaucrats should run Brussels’ anti-disinformation operation in the upcoming European elections.
Staffing levels are also a worry with the DSA, as the Commission currently employs just 75 people to police online content (in comparison to 300 used to implement similar UK online safety legislation.
At the time of writing, the EU is perhaps most worried that only about a third of the national agencies meant to enforce the DSA are in place, with specific concern about whether the Irish regulator will be able to handle the enormous workload caused by the presence of most U.S. tech firms in Dublin.
While the EU has already butted heads with Elon Musk’s X, additional lawfare appears to be on the way. Both Meta and Tik Tok launched legal proceedings over annual fees imposed on the platforms corresponding to their share of the market.
In a statement the European Commission said it was not in a position to comment on the alleged internal rivalry but confirmed that Breton “wrote to platform CEOs to highlight certain risks and incidents which had been detected in relation to the conflict in the Middle East and to request that they take urgent and diligent action in line with their obligations” as the EU struggles to maintain a coherent position on the Israel-Hamas war.
