EU, UK criticise US visa bans in ‘censorship’ row
The European Union, France and Germany condemn the US visa ban on five Europeans fighting online hate and disinformation; Officials in Brussels said the EU could “respond quickly and decisively” to the “unfair measures”.
US President Donald Trump’s administration on Tuesday imposed a visa ban on five people, including French former EU commissioner Thierry Breton.
He accuses them of trying to censor free speech or unfairly target US tech giants with burdensome regulations.
The bans mark a new escalation against Europe, which the United States argues is rapidly becoming irrelevant due to its weak defenses, failure to combat immigration, unnecessary bureaucratic processes and “censorship” to keep nationalist voices out of power.
In Brussels, Paris and Berlin, senior officials condemned the US bans and defended Europe’s right to legislate how foreign companies operate domestically.
A European Commission spokesman said it “strongly condemns the US decision”, adding: “Freedom of expression is a fundamental right in Europe and a fundamental value shared with the US in the democratic world.”
The EU will seek a response from the US but can “respond quickly and decisively” to “unfair measures”, the spokesman said.
French President Emmanuel Macron, who has been touring France to warn about the dangers of disinformation to democracy, said he spoke to Breton and thanked him for his work.
“We will not give up and we will protect the independence of Europe and the freedom of Europeans,” Macron said on channel X.
Breton, a former French finance minister and commissioner for the European internal market from 2019 to 2024, was one of the architects of the EU’s Digital Services Act.
A landmark piece of legislation, the DSA aims to make the internet safer by forcing tech giants to do more to combat illegal content, including hate speech and child sexual abuse material.
But the DSA angered the US administration, which accused the EU of imposing “unnecessary” restrictions on freedom of expression in its efforts to combat hate speech, misinformation and disinformation.
He also argues that the DSA unfairly targets US tech giants and US citizens.
US officials were particularly upset earlier this month when the EU fined Elon Musk’s X platform 120 million euros ($A211 million) for violating online content rules.
The bans also targeted Imran Ahmed, the British CEO of the US-based Center to Counter Digital Hate; Anna-Lena von Hodenberg and Josephine Ballon of the German nonprofit HateAid; and Clare Melford, co-founder of the Global Disinformation Index, according to U.S. Undersecretary of Public Diplomacy Sarah Rogers.
Germany’s justice ministry said the two German activists had the “support and solidarity” of the government and that visa bans against them were unacceptable, adding that HateAid supports people affected by illegal digital hate speech.
“Anyone who describes this as censorship is misrepresenting our constitutional system,” the statement said.
“The rules we want to live by in the digital space in Germany and Europe are not decided in Washington.”
The UK said it was committed to protecting the right to freedom of expression.
“While each country has the right to set its own visa rules, we support the laws and institutions that work to keep the internet free of the most harmful content,” a UK government spokesman said in a statement. he said.
A spokesperson for the Global Disinformation Index called the visa bans “an authoritarian attack on freedom of expression and a horrific act of government censorship.”
“The Trump Administration is once again using the full weight of the federal government to intimidate, censor, and silence voices with which they disagree,” they said.
“Their actions today are immoral, illegal and un-American.”
