Commissioner and activists on the sanctions list

Because American freedom of speech is much broader than European freedom of speech, Americans are accustomed to a much wider range of what they can and cannot say in the public sphere.

Following the US warnings of August 2025, the US State Department issued a notice of action on 23 December 2025 against five specific individuals in the form of visa restrictions - a ban on entry to the US.

These individuals include Imran Ahmed (head of the Center for Combating Digital Hate), Josephine Ballon and Anna-Lena von Hodenberg (heads of HateAid, a German NGO fighting digital violence and hate), Clare Melford (head of the Global Disinformation Index, an NGO that assesses the spread of disinformation by others), and Thierry Breton, a former EU commissioner and French ex-economy minister. These individuals were identified by Sarah Rogers, Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy.

Thierry Breton is a former EU Internal Market Commissioner who Rogers identified as the architect of the DSA regulation. Breton has in the past publicly warned Elon Musk, owner of Social Network X (formerly Twitter), that by posting Musk's conversation with Donald Trump on the social network ahead of the presidential election, he "may be reinforcing harmful content".

Breton has also pressed Musk to ensure that his social network complies with EU law, including the DSA regulation, which Elon Musk has rejected, describing the efforts as censorship. The European Commission subsequently sanctioned Network X with a €120 million fine.

It is this event that is being described in the media as the trigger for US sanctions against the EU.

Radical activists and NGOs

In its statement on the sanctions, the US State Department said the measures affected individuals "who have led organized efforts to force American platforms to censor, demonetize, and suppress American views with which they disagree. These radical activists and weaponized NGOs have advanced censorship crackdowns against foreign states - in each case targeting American speakers and American companies."

In light of the activities of the five sanctioned individuals, as well as similar activity by other entities, the State Department also speaks of the possibility of "initiating proceedings to expel certain individuals from the United States," citing President Donald Trump's "America First" foreign policy doctrine.

President Trump sees "extraterritorial overreach by foreign censors targeting American speech" as a violation of American sovereignty, and the State Department is "ready and willing to expand today's list if other foreign actors do not change course."

In this regard, Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated that "European ideologues have for too long led an organized effort to punish dissenting views of Americans, and the Trump administration will no longer tolerate these heinous acts of censorship."

Both the representatives of the NGOs concerned and the European Union condemned the US sanctions, saying that it "strongly condemns the US decision" and is ready to react swiftly and decisively against "unjustified measures".

America has no right to dictate legislation to Europe

Sanctions against EU citizens can be seen at two basic levels of power.

The first level can be seen in legal terms. The space of the Union is and must be regulated exclusively by EU law and the Member States. It is not for a foreign power to dictate the terms of how Europeans set the rules of operation, however unfortunate they may be.

If companies want to operate and do business in this market, they must adapt to local legislation. It would be inconceivable for Americans to have European entities coming to them and demanding that American laws be adapted to European ones, as they are used to doing in their home countries. They would very quickly discover that 'that is not the way'.

The American Constitution guarantees probably the widest freedom of speech in the civilised world, thanks in particular to the First Amendment. This prohibits the government (Congress) from censoring its citizens, regardless of their current position (place) in the world.

While the case law of the Supreme Court of the United States has generally held that the constitutional rights of citizens can be exercised outside the United States, this is only the case when the actions of the U.S. government are at issue. Thus, the U.S. cannot directly enforce the First Amendment against a foreign state, but in practice it seeks to do so through diplomatic and economic tools, such as sanctions against individuals or regimes.

Despite these facts, Secretary Rubio said in a statement that "it is unacceptable for foreign officials to threaten US citizens with arrest warrants for their social media posts when they are physically present on US soil. It is also unacceptable for foreign officials to demand that U.S. technology platforms adopt global content moderation policies or engage in censorship activities that exceed their authority and encroach on the United States."

The Secretary of State added that the US will not tolerate interference with American sovereignty if such interference undermines the right to free speech.

Censorship is only prohibited by the state

Another problem is that this amendment (as in the conditions of the Slovak Republic under Article 26 of the Constitution) does not apply to private companies such as social networks. Thus, it is not possible to require a private operator to have the same scope of freedom of expression within its product as is required of the state.

It is no longer possible to apply US legislation in a territory where it has no reach in terms of enforcement. An American citizen in Europe is not governed solely by the laws of his or her home country, but must also be subject to and respect the rules of the country in which he or she is currently located. Thus, it is not the case that Americans can ignore the laws of a given country if, for example, they conflict with the laws of the United States.

Dictating rules to others is something that the US has a long tradition of doing, and even with a highly respected international institution, there is precedent for America enforcing its own solutions through the 'economics of force'. The case of the US imposition of sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague has shown that, when necessary, this world power is capable of going very far indeed.

However, the Union is not a third world developing country or an institution without its own means of law enforcement where a specific vision of the world can be enforced by force.

Sanctions are the first and serious step in trying to change legislation and the overall environment where America has no powers to do so. Rationally, in the current global political climate, the whole affair cannot be expected to end with sanctions on just five people.

The Union has tasted its own power practices

The second level represents the Union's sobering up from what it had been trying to enforce by "force" on its "administered subjects". European leaders suddenly found that they were not the absolute rulers of truth, as they often perceived themselves to be, but that someone with 'bigger shoulders' had come along and shaken the foundations of their power.

Global technology companies with levers of power in the highest echelons of American politics (Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg) are not players who let themselves be constrained in business. They certainly can't be expected to pay hundreds of millions of euros in fines without a backlash.

Meanwhile, the EU itself has set some convenient precedents for the Americans by sanctioning its own citizens for inconvenient views. One can mention the case of retired Swiss colonel Jacques Baud, who Brussels claimed was a "pro-Russian manipulator". For this 'crime', without a proper anchor in the legal order, Baud (as well as other EU citizens) had his assets frozen and was banned from moving around the EU.

The Union could afford this blatant act of censorship because the whole process of granting and withdrawing sanctions is opaque, legally complex, time-consuming and basically has no one above it who can reverse the decision in a short time. As a result of the asset freeze, the persons concerned do not only have no means of proper legal aid, but also no means of functioning on a day-to-day basis.

The grounds for sanctions are vague and it is therefore not clear what the persons concerned have to defend themselves against - unlike in criminal law, where the act and the section violated are precisely specified.

The Union officials have now discovered what it means to be on the weaker side of equally vaguely and unintelligibly worded 'offences', and can breathe a sigh of relief that they are 'only' barred from entering the US and have not had all their property seized.

America, as the stronger global player, is enforcing its 'correct views' on Europe with the same coercion that the EU has applied to its own citizens. It is not right, but the dispassionate observer undoubtedly sees a degree of 'poetic justice' in it.

Activists as parallel state authorities

From the point of view of the censorship activities of NGOs, which hold themselves out as the only proper arbiters of "truth", it is right that their actions should be stopped. It is absolutely unacceptable to create lists of enemies along the lines of communist regimes, to be destroyed on the basis of feelings and impressions alone. Diversity in Europe, as they see it, means the existence of a single correct opinion.

The activists in question have neither the training nor the competence for these activities, and are extremely politically or ideologically biased - a fact that appears almost without exception in every modern analogy of unelected judges of opinion. The non-governmental sector thus functions as a hidden arm of the autocratic machine, which, under the guise of 'setting society right' and without any accountability, liquidates inconvenient opinions.

No one will be surprised when it subsequently comes to light that they have been paid by various states or their organs for their propaganda. At EU level, one can point to the scandal of the promotion of the green agenda through NGOs that were paid by the European Commission to liquidate opponents of this ideology. The Italian activist and MEP Ilaria Salis even earned immunity after her hammer attacks on people she claimed were fascists.

With these examples, it is hardly surprising that the US State Department identifies 'radical activists and NGOs' against whom it deems it necessary to take action in defence of its intentions.

The goal in this case is traditionally noble in theory, but the path is wrong. The modern-day censors should be dealt with by the citizens of the Union themselves, not by a foreign power. The question remains whether they have the space and the courage to do so at all.