US sanctions will not 'silence' EU's work on moderating online content: Commissioner

Brussels, Belgium - The European Union's commissioner in charge of the bloc's single market said Wednesday that US sanctions won't stop him from doing his work after the Trump administration placed a visa ban on his predecessor for trying to regulate big tech companies.

"My predecessor @ThierryBreton acted in the interest of the European general good, faithful to the mandate given by the voters in 2019," Stephane Sejourne, European Commissioner for Internal Market and Services, said on X.

"No sanction will silence the sovereignty of the European peoples. Total solidarity with him and all affected Europeans," he said.

The US State Department said Tuesday it would deny visas to Breton and four activists, accusing them of seeking to "coerce" American social media platforms into censoring viewpoints they oppose.

The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has not yet reacted, though the French government reacted strongly late Tuesday.

Breton, a Frenchman, was described by the US State Department as the "mastermind" of the European Union's Digital Services Act (DSA), which imposes content moderation and other standards on major social media platforms operating in Europe.

Breton, who left the European Commission in 2024, on X slammed the ban as a "witch hunt," comparing the situation to the US McCarthy era when officials were chased out of government for alleged ties to communism.

The DSA has become a rallying point for US conservatives who see it as a weapon of censorship against right-wing thought in Europe and beyond, an accusation the EU furiously denies.

"The Digital Services Act was democratically adopted in Europe. It has absolutely no extraterritorial reach and in no way affects the United States," French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said on X.

The visa ban also targeted Imran Ahmed of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a nonprofit that fights online misinformation, as well as Anna-Lena von Hodenberg and Josephine Ballon of HateAid, a German organization that the State Department said functions as a trusted flagger for enforcing the DSA. Clare Melford, who leads the UK-based Global Disinformation Index (GDI), was also on the list.