How ‘Free Speech’ Became a New Flashpoint Between Europe and U.S.

President Trump and Europe are clashing over tariffs, the war in Ukraine and the very purpose of the European Union’s existence. But they are also divided over free speech — with potentially far-reaching implications for how the digital world is regulated.

The E.U. has been investigating U.S. companies under the Digital Services Act, a new law meant to prevent illegal content and disinformation from spreading online. In the first major case to near a conclusion, regulators as soon as this summer are expected to impose significant penalties — including a fine and demands for product changes — on Elon Musk’s social media platform, X, saying the law was violated.

But Mr. Trump’s administration sees the law as a strike against his version of free speech: One that unshackles his allies to say what they want online, but restricts types of expression he does not agree with in the real world, like protests at universities.

The president has argued that Europe is at risk of “losing their wonderful right to freedom of speech.” Vice President JD Vance has accused European nations of “digital censorship” because of its laws, which he argues restricts far-right voices on the internet.

And both administration officials and their allies at big technology companies have suggested that Europe’s rules for curbing disinformation and incendiary speech on the internet are an attack on American companies — one that the United States could fight back against.

Since Mr. Trump’s inauguration, Europe and the United States have clashed repeatedly. On Ukraine, Mr. Trump has dialed back support and threatened not to defend European nations that do not invest enough in their own security. On trade, Mr. Trump this week announced wide-ranging tariffs on Europe. And as European regulators begin to enforce their new social media rules, free speech is becoming another flashpoint.

“We’re now at this impasse: The free speech debate is affecting every aspect of the trans-Atlantic relationship,” said David Salvo, a researcher at the German Marshall Fund who is an expert in democracy building. “It’s a mess.”

Even before the 2024 election, Mr. Vance argued in a podcast that America could consider tying its support for NATO to “respect” for American values and free speech. In February, Mr. Vance spoke at the security conference in Munich and warned that “free speech, I fear, is in retreat.”

Such comments come even as the American administration has itself quarreled with universities over speech on their campuses, arrested pro-Palestinian activists, ousted journalists from the White House press pool, canceled identity-related holidays at federal institutions and instituted policies that led to banned books in certain schools — moves that have alarmed free speech watchdogs.

And in Europe, officials have firmly objected to criticism of their laws, arguing that they help protect free speech, for instance by making sure that some ideas are not secretly promoted by platforms even as others are suppressed.

“We’re not a Ministry of Truth,” said Thomas Regnier, a spokesman for the European Union’s executive branch, the European Commission, referring to the dystopian force responsible for state propaganda in George Orwell’s “1984.”

Still, some fret that Europe’s latest policies surrounding digital services could come under attack. In February, the White House published a memo warning that E.U. tech laws were being scrutinized for unfairly targeting American companies.

“Of course our feeling is that they will use tariffs to push us to backtrack on tech regulation,” said Anna Cavazzini, an German representative from the Green party who was part of a trip to Washington for European lawmakers to meet with their American counterparts on the issues of digital policy and speech.

The tension goes back decades. Europe has long preferred more guardrails for speech, while America prioritizes personal rights over almost everything but immediate public safety. Germany has outlawed certain speech related to Nazism, while other countries restrict certain forms of hate speech toward religious groups. In Denmark, it is illegal to burn the Quran.

But while those nuanced differences have long existed, the internet and social media have now made the issue a geopolitical pressure point. And that has been sharply exacerbated by the new administration.

The Digital Services Act does not disallow specific content, but it requires companies to have safeguards in place to remove content that is illegal based on national or international laws, and focuses on whether content moderation decisions are made in a transparent way.

“This is a question about how to make sure that your services are safe to use and respecting the law of the land where you do your business,” said Margrethe Vestager, a former European Commission executive vice president from Denmark who oversaw antitrust and digital policy from 2014 to 2024.

Christel Schaldemose, who shepherded the law through negotiations for the European Parliament, said the law protects free speech. She added, “You don’t have a right to be amplified.”

The case against X will be the first major test of the law. In the first part of the investigation that regulators are now finalizing, authorities have concluded that X has breached the act because of its lack of oversight of its verified account system, its weak advertising transparency and its failure to provide data to outside researchers.

In another part of the case, E.U. authorities are investigating whether X’s hands-off approach to policing user-generated content has made it a hub of illegal hate speech, disinformation and other material that might undercut democracy.

This week, X said the E.U.’s actions amounted to “an unprecedented act of political censorship and an attack on free speech.”

E.U. officials have had to weigh the geopolitical ramifications of targeting a company owned by one of Mr. Trump’s closest advisers.

“Are they going to fine the guy who’s buddy-buddy with the President?” said William Echikson, a nonresident senior fellow with the Tech Policy Program at the Center for European Policy Analysis.

X is not the only major tech company in the conversation.

Meta, which is also under E.U. investigation, scrapped its use of fact checkers for Facebook, Instagram and Threads in the United States shortly after the election, and may eventually pull them back worldwide. Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s chief executive, has called the E.U.’s regulations “censorship” and argued that the United States should defend its technology companies against the onslaught.

This is not the first time America and Europe have had different standards for speech on the internet. European courts have upheld the idea that data about a person can be erased from the internet, the so-called “right to be forgotten.” American legal experts and policymakers have viewed that as an infringement on free speech.

But the alliance between Mr. Trump and big technology companies — which have been emboldened by his election — is widening the gap.

European officials have vowed that the Trump administration will not prevent them from standing by their values and enforcing their new legislation. The next few months will be a pivotal test of just how much they can stick to those plans.

When she visited Washington earlier this year to talk to lawmakers, Ms. Schaldemose said, she found little appetite for trying to understand the regulation that she helped to bring into existence.

“It doesn’t fit into the agenda of the administration: It doesn’t help them to understand,” she said. “We’re not targeting them, but it is perceived like that.”