Henna Virkkunen tells U.S. member of Congress that the EU is ‘deeply committed’ to protecting free speech.
The European Union’s social media law “does not regulate speech,” EU tech boss Henna Virkkunen told a key U.S. lawmaker who had criticized the bloc’s tech rules as censorship.
A regulation that largely targets U.S. Big Tech firms, the Digital Services Act is now in the eye of a transatlantic trade row, with President Donald Trump threatening tariffs and U.S. officials blasting EU censorship, echoing earlier comments from Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg.
“The EU is deeply committed to protecting and promoting free speech online and offline,” Virkkunen said in a letter to United States House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan dated Feb. 18 and seen by POLITICO. “Many Europeans have living memories of censorship and persecution during the Cold War under communist regimes.”
Virkkunen said the Digital Services Act (DSA) is “content-agnostic” and that Brussels and national regulators “have no power to moderate content or to impose any specific approach to moderation.” Rules defining unlawful speech or illegal content, such as child abuse material, are outlined in separate EU or national legislation.
She argued, on the contrary, that the law “guarantees” free speech since platforms must be transparent about how they handle content.
Jordan had pressed Virkkunen in January to address “serious concerns with how the DSA’s censorship provisions affect free speech in the United States.”
He warned that the DSA, which only applies in the EU, “may limit or restrict Americans’ constitutionally protected speech in the United States.”
But Virkkunen said the law cannot be used to press platforms to restrict lawful speech in the U.S. or elsewhere.
“This is categorically not the case,” she said, adding that the DSA “applies exclusively within the European Union.”
She went on to argue that the “real threats to free expression” lie elsewhere, in countries like Russia, Iran and China.
Jordan has emerged as one of the most vocal opponents of the EU’s tech regulation, sending letters to both Virkkunen and competition chief Teresa Ribera about the DSA and the EU’s digital competition law, the Digital Markets Act.
Ribera and Virkkunen also wrote separately to Jordan that the DMA “does not target U.S. companies,” POLITICO reported last week.