The European Union's commissioner in charge of the bloc's single market said on Wednesday that U.S. 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 U.S. State Department said on Dec. 23 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 Dec. 23.
Breton, a Frenchman, was described by the U.S. 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 U.S. McCarthy era when officials were chased out of government for alleged ties to communism.
The DSA has become a rallying point for U.S. conservatives who see it as a weapon of censorship against right-wing thought in Europe and beyond, an accusation the EU furiously denies.
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.
