EU Backtracks After Commissioner Threatened Musk Over Trump Interview

The EU Commission tried to save face by saying Thierry Breton’s letter to X’s Musk was unauthorized.

It took less than a day for the European Commission to completely backtrack on its attempt to intimidate X owner Elon Musk into censoring his interview with President Trump. Officials distanced themselves from the commissioner who sent the threatening letter and claimed that he acted alone, with no prior authorization from Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

As we reported, Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton—the EU’s self-styled “digital enforcer” responsible for creating and overseeing the bloc’s infamous social media censorship tool, the Digital Services Act (DSA)—wrote a letter to Musk ahead of the billionaire’s two-hour-long live interview with the Republican presidential candidate, “reminding” him that failing to moderate any content on X that “may incite violence, hate, or racism … including in the context of elections” will face legal repercussions and the “full use of [the EU’s] toolbox.”

The threat turned out to be counterproductive as conservative politicians on both sides of the Atlantic rushed to call out Brussels’ attempt to violate the principles of freedom of expression as well as to interfere in the democratic electoral process of an outside country, the United States.

Facing the growing backlash, the Commission simply chose to throw Breton under the bus, completely washing its hands of what it described as the unfortunate action of an official gone rogue. “The timing and the wording of the letter were neither coordinated nor agreed with the president nor with the [other commissioners],” a Commission spokesman said on Tuesday, August 13th.

Several anonymous Eurocrats also came forward to snub Breton and further distance themselves from him. “Thierry has his own mind and way of working and thinking,” one of them told the FT; while another source seemed to regret the fact that Breton’s stunt may hinder future digital regulations. He told Politico that “DSA implementation is too important to be misused by an attention-seeking politician in search of his next big job.”

It may be true that the commissioner’s decision to send the letter was made without wider consent within the Commission, but the argument still seems like a weak excuse given that as Internal Market Chief, Breton is fully empowered to oversee enforcement of the DSA and can communicate with companies who fall subject to the new rules independently.

Furthermore, as much of a PR disaster as it turned out to be, Breton’s letter did not exist in a vacuum. Critics of the DSA have long warned that certain parts of the flagship legislation package can be easily misused to censor political opposition—primarily right-wing views—on social media, as it allows Brussels to unilaterally decide what it deems “harmful content” that must be purged from online discussions. 

What’s more, the Commission spokesman also confirmed what Breton said in the letter, namely that the ongoing investigation against X into whether it violates the DSA by allowing too much free speech will take into account the restitution of Donald Trump’s account (suspended after the January 6th riots in DC), regardless of the fact that he’s running an election campaign.

Last month, Elon Musk also revealed that the European Commission offered him a “secret backroom deal” to increase censorship on X to avoid being slapped with massive fines under the DSA without having to compromise his image as a “free speech absolutist,” but the billionaire promptly refused. That discussion may have led Breton to write the first draft of the letter, which he admitted to keeping on the shelf for some time now while waiting for an appropriate time to publish.

In short, the DSA gives Brussels’ leftist bureaucrats every opportunity to abuse it by silencing political opposition, and Breton only did what was the logical next step of what has been in the works for years. His only mistake was to do it openly. Nonetheless, it would be naïve to think the Commission would not resort to the “full use of its toolbox” either way; it is just angry Breton drew attention to what has been going on from the beginning.

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