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A former EU commissioner has hit back after receiving a US visa ban over alleged censorship.
The Trump administration imposed visa bans on Thierry Breton, the former European Union commissioner who initiated the Digital Services Act (DSA) and four anti-disinformation activists, accusing them of censoring American social media platforms.
“The State Department is taking decisive action against five individuals who led organized efforts to coerce U.S. platforms to censor, demonetize, and remove U.S. views they oppose,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement.
He added that “these radical activists and armed NGOs have advanced the crackdown on censorship by foreign states, in each case targeting American speakers and American companies.”
As such, their entry into the United States has “potentially serious negative foreign policy consequences,” he said.
“Based on these determinations, the Department has taken action to impose visa restrictions on agents of the global censorship industrial complex who, as a result, will generally be barred from entry into the United States.”
Breton, who served as European Commissioner between 2019 and 2024, wrote on »
“To our American friends: “Censorship is not where you think it is.””
This comes as president Donald Trump continues to intensify travel restrictions for foreign visitors And criticizes Europe.
Rubio did not identify who his department had taken action against, but Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy Sarah Rogers later did so on X.
Joséphine Ballon, co-leader of HateAid and member of the German Digital Services Advisory Council, was among those working on anti-disinformation campaigns only to receive sanctions. His co-leader Anna-Lena von Hodenberg was also affected. CNBC has contacted Ballon and Von Hodenberg for comment.
The bans are part of efforts to enforce what Rogers calls a “red line” for the United States and “extraterritorial censorship of Americans.”
In an interview with GB News on December 4, Rogers took aim at the UK’s Online Safety Act (OSA), saying the law was applied extraterritorially, taking into account US citizens’ speech about US politics on US-based platforms.
The EU DSA and the UK OSA are among the few pieces of legislation designed to check the power of Big Tech and improve children’s safety online.
The strengths of the DSA tech giants like Google And Meta to police illegal content more aggressively, under penalty of hefty fines, while the OSA law requires age verification on adult sites and a number of other platforms.
