One year after issuing a high-profile warning to Elon Musk over so-called “harmful” speech online, former European Union Commissioner Thierry Breton is again advocating for stricter control over digital expression.
This time, he is dismissing concerns from US lawmakers about the EU’s speech censorship framework.
Breton has declined to appear before the House Judiciary Committee for a hearing titled “Europe’s Threat to American Speech and Innovation,” scheduled for September 3.
In his letter to Committee Chair Jim Jordan, Breton claimed the short notice was the reason for his refusal.
We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.
He went further by stating he was providing an op-ed “to help your committee to avoid a biased debate or a possible instrumentalisation of the EU legislation for short term political benefit.”
The op-ed, published in the European press the same day as his letter, contains a defense of the EU’s censorship law, the Digital Services Act (DSA), portraying it not as a censorship regime but as a bold assertion of European sovereignty online.
Breton argues that refusing to regulate the digital space would represent “a historic abdication of the public sphere, of political will, of the democratic promise.”
He insists the DSA reflects the EU’s democratic values and frames any objection to it as an affront to European lawmaking authority.
Breton’s framing conveniently sidesteps the real objection from the US side: that these “regulations” are being used as a justification to suppress speech and intimidate platforms into compliance with state-mandated narratives.
His rhetoric, echoing terms like “respect” and “mutual understanding,” does little to hide the DSA’s enforcement mechanisms, which include heavy sanctions for platforms that fail to toe the EU’s line.
The European Commission, Breton writes, is “duty-bound” to apply these penalties “firmly and swiftly.”
He further claims, “Let us be absolutely clear: regulating the digital space has never been, and will never be, an assault on freedom of expression,” even as the DSA grants broad discretionary power to EU authorities over what content platforms can or cannot allow.
In his public messaging and in the op-ed, Breton also attempts to link any resistance to the DSA with US trade aggression, painting Europe as under siege from American economic pressure.
The piece draws comparisons to past US trade actions under Donald Trump, accusing the US of imposing “punitive unilateral tariffs” and using that history to justify a more defiant EU posture on tech regulation.
His message to lawmakers and tech companies alike is blunt: obey EU law or lose access to the European market. “Europe is free to define its own laws and policies,” he writes, “but that openness comes with one condition: our laws must be respected.”
What’s missing from Breton’s argument is any acknowledgment of the chilling effect such sweeping regulation can have on open discourse.
While he claims the EU is merely bringing rule of law into the digital space, opponents of the DSA view it as a top-down enforcement system that can easily be weaponized to silence dissent, particularly when “harmful” speech is defined by those in power.
By framing objections as attempts to undermine EU sovereignty, Breton avoids addressing the more urgent concern: the growing trend of governments worldwide, including democracies, using regulation as a Trojan horse for censorship. The DSA, for all its euphemistic packaging, is no exception.
