In 2025, the United States House Committee on the Judiciary published a report seeking to portray the Digital Services Act (DSA) as a tool for censorship. In January of this year, five Europeans were denied entry to the United States due to their involvement in research on Big Tech platforms and the enforcement of the DSA. Those affected included former European Commissioner Thierry Breton and four NGO employees, among them staff members from HateAid.
On February 3, 2026, the House Committee released its second report, titled “The Foreign Censorship Threat, Part II: Europe’s Decade-Long Campaign to Censor the Global Internet and How It Harms American Speech in the United States.” The report references a roundtable organized by the Dutch Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM), the body responsible for supervising the DSA in the Netherlands, in the lead-up to the Dutch parliamentary elections. It frames the meeting as an attempt at censorship and labels participating NGOs, including INACH, as “censorious,” without providing further substantiation.
Taken together, these developments constitute a direct challenge to Europe’s democratic rule of law, to how our societies organize themselves, establish regulatory frameworks and enforce them. These reports are not fundamentally about protecting free speech; rather, they appear aimed at pressuring countries to allow extremist rhetoric and disinformation to circulate unchecked within the public sphere, even where such content may be unlawful. By questioning the legitimacy of lawmakers, regulators and civil society actors, the United States risks engaging in a form of intimidation that undermines European autonomy. Europe must retain the sovereign ability to determine how its societies are governed. While the United States is entitled to express its views, external interference in the enforcement of European legislation crosses an important boundary. If pressure from political actors such as Donald Trump, his allies were to prevail, the consequences for citizens would be significant: reduced transparency, increased political manipulation on digital platforms and weaker safeguards against coordinated hate campaigns.
The intense focus on the Digital Services Act also underscores its significance as a regulatory instrument capable of holding large technology companies accountable, highlighting the importance of timely and decisive enforcement.
In this context, it is essential that the European Union continues to speak out against actions that threaten democratic processes. The European Commission must remain resolute in upholding the law, and regulators should sustain enforcement efforts. Equally important is the need for regulators to operate with heightened awareness of emerging threats and to ensure the protection of civil society organizations, whose work is indispensable to effective oversight and accountability.
