Donald Trump’s administration is using freedom of speech as the latest line of attack on the EU in a campaign that’s shaking the foundations of an alliance that stretches back to the dawn of the Cold War.
The interest in free speech, which includes attacks on European protections against election interference from malign actors such as Russia, appears focused on boosting far-right parties. Trump has found allies among tech magnates like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, who are fighting regulators’ attempts to rein in US tech giants.
The broadsides, often couched in lofty rhetoric about protecting democracy, may also have a more prosaic motivation: less regulation could free Silicon Valley companies from burdensome requirements and spare them billions of dollars of fines that the EU has levied against them in what Trump last month called a “form of taxation”.
The battle is playing out ahead of federal elections in Germany on Sunday, where Trump acolytes have boosted the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, party that has risen to second in the polls. AfD’s lead candidate, Alice Weidel, has pledged to “make Germany great again” with a platform that seeks to close borders, unwind European integration and restore relations with Russia.
At the heart of the conflict are Europe’s digital regulations, which have frequently targeted the US-based technology companies that dominate the internet. Zuckerberg’s Meta Platforms, which owns social media platforms Facebook and Instagram and messaging service WhatsApp, has been hit with more than €2-billion in penalties for breaching antitrust and data protection rules.
Apple and Google have also been slapped with significant fines, while Musk’s X and Meta are facing probes under the EU’s content moderation law that could result in penalties of as much as 6% of their yearly global sales.
Rhetoric
Musk and Zuckerberg, the two richest people on the planet according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, have in turn ramped up their rhetoric against EU regulation, accusing the bloc of censorship.
European officials argue the issue is about ensuring social media companies take steps to mitigate disinformation and foreign interference that undermine electoral integrity and civil discourse.
Musk, who last month held a conversation with Weidel on X that Germany monitored as a potential campaign finance violation, has often used his platform to promote misinformation.
Read: Google rages over ‘grave’ EU errors as it fights €4.3-billion fine
In 2024, immigration and voter fraud became Musk’s most frequently posted and engaged with policy topic, garnering about 10 billion views, according to a Bloomberg analysis in October.
Thierry Breton, the EU’s former tech enforcer who helped draft many of the regulations, said in an interview that free speech is “absolutely paramount” for the bloc.
“If this had been about censorship, it would have not received the level of support it did, including from the extreme right and extreme left,” Breton said, pointing to the overwhelming majority of the European parliament that voted for the Digital Services Act in 2022.
The clash is the latest example of the growing transatlantic rift that threatens longstanding trade and security relations that until recently seemed immutable. Vice President JD Vance, speaking last weekend at the annual Munich Security Conference, accused EU “commissars” of suppressing free speech and said Europe’s retreat from its fundamental values is a bigger threat to the continent than geopolitical adversaries Russia or China. Calling Trump Washington’s “new sheriff”, Vance slammed attempts to moderate speech on social media.
Vance’s talk “weaponised free speech” and acted as a warning shot that Washington will push back on the EU as it tries to regulate American tech platforms, Canadian foreign minister Melanie Joly said in an interview.
Some EU officials believe the US is using free speech as a pressure point to cow the bloc into softening its regulation of technology platforms, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified to speak frankly.
There is growing concern in Brussels that the US will use free-speech arguments and security threats to demand concessions in trade disputes, the person said.
“American power comes with certain strings attached,” Vance said on the Shawn Ryan Show podcast during last year’s campaign, linking support for Nato allies with what he called respect for free speech.
The escalating fight comes amid a stunning pivot by Trump against Volodymyr Zelensky as he seeks to reach a peace deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin with little Ukrainian or EU involvement for now. Trump’s attacks — which Musk has repeated and amplified on X — have included false claims about Zelensky’s popularity and calls for an election that appear to echo a Russian propaganda talking point designed to undermine the Ukrainian president. Ukrainian elections have been suspended since martial law was declared following the full-scale Russian invasion three years ago.
Divisions
The EU is also riven by growing internal divisions, as right wing euro-sceptic parties edge closer to power across the bloc. In Romania, the country’s top court controversially ordered a repeat of the election after security officials determined that Russian interference had helped propel an obscure far-right candidate to a stunning first-round victory in November.
Vance slammed that decision in his Munich speech, claiming that the election was annulled because of a few hundred thousand dollars spent on social media ads. Romanian security officials said the vote was skewed by a covert influence campaign, although some of the evidence was not made public.
For now, the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, is holding firm and says it will continue to enforce its digital rules.
Read: Europe on collision course with Trump over Big Tech
“Our rules are based on our European values,” Henna Virkkunen, the commission’s tech tsar, said on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference. “We want to be very clear in this that when we are speaking about digital environment, we want to have the same rules in the digital world that we have also in our societies.” — (c) 2025 Bloomberg LP
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