The European extreme right has exploded this Tuesday in the European Parliament against the EU Digital Services Law (DSA), which seeks to prosecute and eliminate illegal content on social networks such as X, Facebook or TikTok and combat in them the misinformation. One day after the inauguration of Donald Trump as president of the United States, surrounded by the great digital oligarchs that control these large digital platforms, the ultra and populist groups of the European Parliament, aligned with the new American leader, have demanded that stop European regulation, which has opened investigations into
Brussels, which is cautious with big technology companies and with Trump’s new policies so as not to trigger retaliation from the tycoon, has promised to accelerate investigations, currently at a standstill, and use “all tools” to defend European democracy. In addition, he has rejected harsh accusations of censorship. “Democracies are facing a growing challenge from interference. And social networks are one of the instruments [para esas injerencias]”Henna Virkkunen, vice president of the European Commission for Technological Sovereignty, said in the plenary session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg. The European official, backed by the center and the left, has faced a cascade of criticism and complaints from the extreme right of the European Parliament.
“The DSA is not reinforced to protect citizens but to control voters,” claimed French MEP Virginie Joron, in a plenary session at the European Parliament in Strasbourg. The Italian Nicola Procaccini, from the ultra Giorgia Meloni party and the European family European Reformists and Conservatives (ECR), has also accused “the left” of using European regulation to control speech and of mobilizing against large platforms because They are losing “political dominance over social networks.” “The EU likes to lecture the rest of the world about human rights and democracy, but censorship and autocratic control reign here,” said Belgian Tom Vandendriessche. “With the DSA regulation it is said that it wants to limit the advocacy of hatred, but in reality it wants to protect power against the democratic protest of those who oppose it,” added the Vlaams Belang MEP.
It is the current slogan of the extreme right: that the regulation of large digital platforms is actually “censorship.” The rhetoric of ECR, the European Patriots (the family of the party of Marine Le Pen and the Hungarian national populist Viktor Orbán) as well as that of the so-called Sovereignists – where the ultras of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) are part of – coincides with that of Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, owner of SpaceX, Tesla and X, the social network with 600 million users, which he is using precisely to promote through his comments —sometimes based on false or biased information— to far-right parties such as AfD. Musk, who will be part of the new Trump Administration, has mobilized on X (formerly Twitter) against the German Social Democratic Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, and against the British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer.
They also coincide with the positioning of Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Meta (owner of Facebook), who in a speech at the beginning of January accused the EU of censorship and overregulating and hindering innovation. Meta has abolished its fact-checking programs in the United States, something that is worrying in Brussels. “Facebook and Google want to end verification, they no longer want to censor their platforms and they give you a hard time,” said MEP Christine Anderson, from Alternative for Germany.
The European Parliament is divided in two on the regulation of the DSA. Faced with criticism from the far right, center and left-wing groups support the regulations. The president of the Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament, Iratxe García, warned this Tuesday that regulation is essential for democracy and has urged the European Commission to accelerate its investigations and apply the law. “What just a short time ago seemed like an opportunity to connect people and strengthen our societies, a tool of progress, today has become a powerful weapon in the hands of those who seek to divide and undermine our institutions,” García said.
“With the arrival of the new president to the United States, we see how, in the digital sphere, the digital giants are moving their chips,” declared the Spanish popular MEP Pablo Arias Echeverría. “It seems that in this game there are no limits, only the interests of the players who disguise them under freedom of expression,” he added.
