Last week, the United States imposed visa bans on former EU tech Commissioner Thierry Breton and four European activists, i.e. Anna-Lena von Hodenberg and Josephine Ballon of the German nonprofit HateAid, Clare Melford, co-founder of the UK-based Global Disinformation Index, and Imran Ahmed, the British chief executive of the US-based Center for Countering Digital Hate.

The move was motivated by the accusation of pressuring American social media platforms to censor American voices. Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State who made the decision, wrote a post on X to justify this move. The post reads “For far too long, ideologues in Europe have led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to punish American viewpoints they oppose. The Trump Administration will no longer tolerate these egregious acts of extraterritorial censorship. Today, [the State Department] will take steps to bar leading figures of the global censorship-industrial complex from entering the United States. We stand ready and willing to expand this list if others do not reverse course.”

Thierry Breton, a French politician and former European Commissioner, is a prominent advocate of digital sovereignty and has often championed stricter regulations for major American technology firms operating within the European Union. Breton is considered the architect behind the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), strongly criticised the ban, likening it to a “McCarthy’s witch hunt.” He defended the DSA as democratically adopted, emphasising its lack of extraterritorial effect on the US. French officials and the targeted nonprofits condemned the US decision, rejecting accusations of censorship.

The controversy partly centres on a letter Breton sent to Elon Musk ahead of his interview to Donald Trump before the 2024 Presidential election, warning about DSA compliance, which US officials interpreted as coercive. The DSA, which mandates transparency and content moderation from major platforms, remains contentious, with US conservatives viewing it as a tool for silencing right-wing views, an allegation the EU denies.

The denial of entry to Breton and other officials is clearly a diplomatic signal rather than a simple administrative issue. The motivations behind such actions derive from ongoing policy disagreements, especially in areas such as data privacy, antitrust regulation, and taxation of tech giants. By restricting entry, US authorities expressed discontent with European regulatory measures that impact American business interests, or responding to perceived lack of reciprocity in international negotiations.

This incident is yet another front in the ongoing confrontation between the US and Europe, well symbolised by the new US Security Strategy discussed in previous columns. US representatives call censorship the prohibition of spreading national-populist, alt-right mis-information, through traditional and social media. Given this lack of initial understanding, obviously incidents are set to occur on a regular basis. We can expect more of them in the future.