Uproar in Europe after US visa bans for 5 European citizens | Here's why

The European unification, anatole france and deutschland on midweek condemned US visa bans imposed on five Europeans working to counter online hate and disinformation, calling the move a fresh escalation by President Donald Trump’s administration against long-standing transatlantic allies.

Washington announced the bans on Tuesday, targeting five European citizens, including French former EU commissioner Thierry Breton, accusing them of censoring free speech and unfairly targeting US technology companies through burdensome regulation, according to a Reuters report.

The decision marks a further hardening of Washington’s stance toward Europe, which US officials have increasingly portrayed as strategically weak, over-regulated, unable to control immigration, and guilty of suppressing far-right and nationalist voices through what they describe as “censorship.”

The visa bans come just weeks after a US National Security Strategy document warned that Europe faced “civilizational erasure” unless it course-corrected to remain a reliable US ally.

That assessment along with remarks by senior Trump officials, including a widely noted February speech by Vice President JD Vance in Munich, has unsettled postwar assumptions about Europe’s relationship with Washington.

Also Read | US denies visas to EU ex-commissioner, four others over tech rules

Thierry Breton, a former French finance minister and the EU’s internal market commissioner from 2019 to 2024, was a key architect of the Digital Services Act, a landmark law aimed at making the internet safer by forcing tech giants to curb illegal content such as hate speech and child sexual abuse material, according to the report.

The legislation has angered the Donald Trump administration, which accuses the EU of imposing undue restrictions on free speech and unfairly targeting US tech companies and citizens in the name of tackling misinformation and disinformation, the report added.

Tensions sharpened earlier this month after Brussels fined Elon Musk’s X platform €120 million for breaching online content rules.

In Brussels, Paris and Berlin, senior officials condemned the visa bans and defended Europe’s right to regulate how foreign companies operate within its borders.

A European Commission spokesperson said the bloc “strongly condemns the US decision,” adding: “Freedom of expression is a fundamental right in Europe and a shared core value with the United States across the democratic world", Reuters reported.

The spokesperson said the EU would seek explanations from Washington but could “respond swiftly and decisively” to the “unjustified measures.”

French President Emmanuel Macron, who has been warning about the threat posed by disinformation to democracy, said he had spoken with Breton and thanked him for his work.

“We will not give up, and we will protect Europe’s independence and the freedom of Europeans,” Macron wrote on X.

The US bans also targeted Imran Ahmed, British CEO of the US-based Center for Countering Digital Hate; Anna-Lena von Hodenberg and Josephine Ballon of the German non-profit HateAid; and Clare Melford, co-founder of the Global Disinformation Index, according to U.S. Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy Sarah Rogers, the report added.

Germany’s justice ministry said the two German activists had the government’s “support and solidarity” and described the visa bans as unacceptable. It said HateAid supports victims of unlawful digital hate speech.

“Anyone who describes this as censorship is misrepresenting our constitutional system,” the ministry said. “The rules by which we want to live in the digital space in Germany and in Europe are not decided in Washington.”

The United Kingdom has also condemned the ban and said it will remain committed to free speech.

“While every country has the right to set its own visa rules, we support the laws and institutions which are working to keep the internet free from the most harmful content,” a British government spokesperson said.

A spokesperson for the Global Disinformation Index called the bans “an authoritarian attack on free speech and an egregious act of government censorship.”

“The Trump Administration is, once again, using the full weight of the federal government to intimidate, censor, and silence voices they disagree with,” the spokesperson said. “Their actions today are immoral, unlawful, and un-American.”

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