Rubio announces visa bans for Western European censorship ‘idealogues’
The US will bar entry to a former EU commissioner and four others it has accused of efforts to censor speech on social media platforms
The US State Department will bar entry to several Western Europeans it has accused of pressuring American technology platforms to suppress US viewpoints, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said.
The move follows a State Department announcement earlier this year establishing a visa restriction policy targeting foreign nationals accused of censoring Americans.
In a post on X on Tuesday, Rubio said that “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,” he added.
Rubio said the State Department “will take steps to bar leading figures of the global censorship‑industrial complex from entering the United States,” and warned that Washington stands “ready and willing to expand this list if others do not reverse course.”
The five Europeans – two French, two British and one German – were identified by US Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Sarah Rogers in posts on X. She named the leaders of several organizations that address digital hate as well as former European Commissioner Thierry Breton.
Rogers described Breton as the “mastermind” behind the EU’s Digital Services Act, citing a warning he issued to Musk, the owner of X, in August 2024 about the potential “amplification of harmful content” if the platform broadcast a livestream interview with then‑presidential candidate Donald Trump.
European Commission officials say the bloc’s digital laws are intended to protect users and combat illegal and harmful content online. Breton responded on X by noting that all 27 EU member states approved the law in 2022, writing: “To our American friends: ‘Censorship isn’t where you think it is.’”
Earlier this month, Telegram founder Pavel Durov warned that European regulators are targeting platforms that allow dissenting speech.
Writing on X, he said the EU “imposes impossible rules so it can punish tech firms that refuse to silently censor free speech.”
His comments followed a €120 million ($140 million) fine imposed on Elon Musk’s X under the Digital Services Act, a move the European Commission said was unrelated to censorship.
Durov has also claimed that EU intelligence officials had pressured him to restrict conservative content during elections in Romania and Moldova.