The greatest threat to Europe isn’t China, Russia, or some other external actor; it’s “the retreat of Europe from… fundamental values” like the freedom of speech.
That was Vice President Vance’s warning to European leaders at the 2025 Munich Security Conference. There, Vance pointed to Europe’s disregard for free speech online as perhaps the greatest threat to democratic society.
He’s right.
Europe’s undermining of fundamental freedoms on its own shores is bad enough. But the European Union hasn’t stopped there; now, it seeks to become the world’s speech police, deputizing Big Tech to enforce its censorship scheme globally.
This overreach threatens Americans’ freedom online and could even influence U.S. elections.
Examples of EU overreach abound.
In one case, mere hours before Elon Musk was set to interview then-presidential candidate Donald Trump on X Spaces in August 2024, then-Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton threatened Musk in a letter.
Breton implied that the livestream risked violating the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) by amplifying “harmful content” linked to “major political—or societal—events….”
The conversation was fully protected by the First Amendment in the U.S.—but Breton targeted X simply because EU users could access the potentially “harmful content.”
EU officials claim that Breton acted without authorization.
But that misses the larger issue. EU regulations inevitably spill over into other Western nations.
Consider the response to EU rules like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which places limits on how digital service providers collect and use personal data. Instead of following the GDPR only in the EU, many of the world’s tech firms have decided it’s simply easier for them to comply with the GDPR everywhere—including in the U.S.
That may sound like a good thing for American data privacy. But this kind of “Brussels effect,” or global adoption of EU standards, could have devastating consequences for free speech online.
The DSA requires large internet platforms to adapt their services—including algorithms and content moderation policies—to mitigate “systemic risks.”
That might appear sensible at first blush. But the DSA lacks a clear, objective definition of “systemic risk.” It leaves the term open-ended, broadly requiring platforms to assess and mitigate vague “risks” such as “any actual or foreseeable negative effects on civic discourse and electoral processes, and public security[.]”
Some of these vague, open-ended provisions in the DSA are used as political weapons to pressure internet platforms into suppress speech that European censors deem “harmful.” In the eyes of EU elites, the label of illicit speech could even extend to interviews with disfavored political leaders.
Adding to those concerns, the European Commission is integrating two codes of practice into the DSA to “encourage” large internet platforms to suppress speech deemed “hateful” or “disinformation” by the EU or its member states.
While officially “voluntary,” these digital speech codes provide cover for government officials and pliant tech platforms to censor views they disagree with.
In Germany, “hateful speech” has included posting controversial cartoons on the internet. In Finland, “hate speech” has included posting a Bible verse on X.
Through the DSA, the EU is deputizing platforms to enforce European speech codes worldwide—and it’s working.
By the EU’s own estimates, platforms removed 28% of the content European regulators classified as so-called “hate speech” in 2016. That number surged to 70% on average by 2019 after platforms agreed to implement the “voluntary” code of conduct.
The EU’s censorship efforts are accelerating. In early February, the European Commission announced a new “European Democracy Shield” initiative. With ties to leftwing funder George Soros, the initiative appears to be a new center of European resistance to the Trump-Vance Administration’s efforts to roll back Big Tech censorship.
>>> Big Tech’s Power to Shape Public Discourse
Such actions don’t just affect speech in Europe. Once platforms implement algorithmic tools to censor “mis/disinformation” and “hate speech” for some users, there’s a temptation to apply those same tools and standards across the board (as we saw with Big Tech’s response to the GDPR).
The EU wants a Brussels effect for internet speech. But that’s fundamentally at odds with American values.
As Vice President Vance put it during the Paris AI Action Summit, the EU’s attempts to “tighten the screws” on American tech firms through regulation are a “terrible mistake” that “America cannot and will not accept.”
If the EU had its way, a simple conversation between Trump and Musk might have been banned from social media altogether.
This directly contradicts the American belief that free expression deserves protection even when it includes viewpoints we disagree with or find offensive. And it reflects nothing less than a brazen attempt to impose European-style speech codes worldwide.
“Free speech, I fear, is on the retreat,” said Vance in Munich. But if Europe succeeds in enforcing its censorship regime, free speech won’t just retreat—it will vanish. Americans must resist this new digital imperialism and fight for a tech future rooted in free expression and republican self-governance.
