In the late afternoon of Wednesday 3 September, the US House of Representatives Judiciary Committee held a hearing in Washington on ‘Europe’s Threat to American Speech and Innovation’.
Throughout the lengthy hearing - which was still ongoing as we went to press - the U.S. administration launched attacks on the European Union, its member states, its legislation, the European Commission, and its officials of a kind rarely seen before.
US Congressman Jim Jordan, a Republican close to US President Donald Trump who initiated the hearing, was scathing of the EU’s digital legislation.
“The EU is attacking American companies, imposing additional obligations on them while leaving European companies completely free. Not content with attacking our businesses, they are also attacking freedom of expression, and censorship is now coming from the Eurocrats”, he said by way of introduction.
The EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) and Digital Markets Act (DMA) were widely criticised by several participants and held responsible for the EU’s lag in technology and innovation.
As well as being continually likened to tools of censorship or economic coercion, the way in which they are applied has been presented as being at the whim of national governments, who “decide” what people “can or cannot say” on social networks.
British ultra-nationalist Nigel Farage was present as a guest witness. He was quick to criticise the British government and its influence - close to “censorship” - on free speech in the UK, siding with Jim Jordan and several other Republican representatives.
Dissenting voices were heard in the person of Democrat MP Jamie Raskin, who took a direct aim at the authoritarian excesses of the Trump administration, arguing that “the authoritarian governments of the world have nothing to fear from the United States”, which “prefers to attack its European allies”.
This is not the first time that Washington has accused the EU of censoring freedom of expression with its legislation (see EUROPE 13700/13). Since Donald Trump came to power for a second term, tensions over the regulation of US digital giants have only increased. (Original version in French by Isalia Stieffatre)