Less than 24 hours after the inauguration of Donald Trump as the 47th President of the United States, MEPs meeting in plenary session in Strasbourg on Tuesday 21 January reiterated their concerns about the recent actions of the American tech giants.
In a lengthy debate lasting more than three hours on the application of the Digital Services Act (DSA) (see EUROPE 13559/9), the elected representatives once again alerted the Commission to the democratic and public safety issues that could be raised by the changes to content moderation policies announced by several platforms.
MEPs were quick to point out Elon Musk’s public support for the radical right-wing German party, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), and his recent violent attacks on the principles of the DSA.
“The deregulations in the tech sector led by Trump and his cronies will not bring us freedom and democracy, but will plunge us deeper into a technological oligarchy, coupled with a far-right, xenophobic, macho, brutal and cynical narrative”, said David Cormand (Greens/EFA, French).
The President of the Socialist and Democrat Group, Iratxe García Pérez (Spanish), did not mince her words about the Commission’s “silence”, which she considered “unacceptable”: “Inaction is not neutrality, it is complicity. It is not enough to legislate or denounce. We must ensure that our rules are applied effectively and punish those who break them”.
The same indignant reaction was heard from the liberals at Renew Europe: “When a platform becomes a tool for interference and hatred, it ceases to be a social network and becomes a political weapon”, argued Stéphanie Yon-Courtin (Renew Europe, French).
On the radical right, on the other hand, which is more sympathetic to Elon Musk and Donald Trump, the DSA is portrayed as a legislative machine promoting censorship within the Union.
The co-president of the Conservatives and Reformists Group (ECR), Nicola Procaccini (Italian), strongly criticised the indignation of the centre-left: “When the left dominated social networks, deciding who could speak and what could be said, they saw no need for debates like this. Now, as its grip loosens, it is suddenly demanding action. The law on digital services must be a tool for freedom, not a means of imposing an ideological bias”, he insisted in the face of objections from his colleagues.
The DSA does not, however, specify which types of speech are criminally reprehensible - this is a matter for each Member State to decide individually - but it does provide a framework for the need to combat their dissemination.
The Commission, in the person of Henna Virkkunen, the Commissioner responsible for tech sovereignty, security and democracy, has pledged to “speed up work on the current cases and to reach conclusions on them as quickly as possible in the light of legal procedures”.
It intends to “present an ambitious approach” in the context of the future “shield for democracy”, declared Henna Virkkunen at the end of the debate, without giving any further details. (Original version in French by Isalia Stieffatre)