European countries should not rush into social media bans for children, human rights adviser Michael O’Flaherty told POLITICO. The comments come as many EU countries push to restrict minors’ access to social media, citing mental health concerns. In France, the parliament’s upper house is this week debating restrictions that President Emmanuel Macron has said will be in place as soon as September. Such bans are neither “proportionate nor necessary,” said O’Flaherty, the commissioner for human rights at the Council of Europe, the continent’s top human rights body, adding that there “are other ways to address the curse of abusive material online.” The debate on how to protect children from the harms of social media “goes straight to bans without looking at all the other options that could be in play,” he told POLITICO. Restricting access to social media presents “issues of human rights, because a child has a right to receive information just like anybody else.” O’Flaherty’s concerns come amid live discussions on the merits and effectiveness of bans in Europe. Australia became the first country in the world to ban minors under 16 from creating accounts on social media platforms like Instagram in late 2025, and Brazil moved forward with its own measures last week. Now France, Denmark, Spain and Greece are among the EU countries heading toward bans, albeit on different timelines. Proponents argue that age-related restrictions setting a minimum age for the most addictive social media platforms are vital to protect children’s physical and mental health. Critics say that bans are ineffective and are detrimental to privacy because they require users to verify themselves online. O’Flaherty argued that — while children’s rights to access information could be curtailed if that overall limited their risks — any restrictions need to be proportionate and necessary. That must follow a serious effort by the EU to tackle illegal and harmful content on social media, he said, which hasn’t happened yet. “We haven’t remotely tried hard enough yet to ensure effective oversight of the platforms.” The human rights chief praised the EU’s digital laws as world-leading, including the Digital Services Act, which seeks to protect kids from systemic risks on online platforms — but said it wasn’t being policed strongly enough. “We have a very piecemeal enforcement of the Digital Services Act and the other relevant rulebook right across Europe. It’s very much dependent on the goodwill and the capacity of the different governments to be serious about it,” he said. Governments have “an uneven record” in that regard, he said. The European Commission, in charge of enforcing the DSA on large social media platforms, is considering its own measures. | Thierry Monasse/Getty Images EU countries must make sure they have exhausted all other solutions before heading for the extreme measures of bans, he said. “I don’t see much sign of that effort.” Still, Denmark, Spain and Greece are among the EU countries heading toward bans, although they are on vastly different timelines. The European Commission, in charge of enforcing the DSA on large social media platforms, is considering its own measures. Countries like Greece have called on the Commission to go forth with an EU-wide ban to avoid fragmentation across the bloc. President Ursula von der Leyen has convened a panel of experts to advise her on next steps, which is expected to give its results by the summer.

BRUSSELS — The United States wants to engage in a meaningful dialogue with Brussels on reducing European tech regulation, its Ambassador to the EU Andrew Puzder told POLITICO. The U.S. administration and its allies have been vocal critics of the EU’s tech rules, saying they unfairly target American companies and hurt freedom of speech. The European Commission has repeatedly denied such allegations, saying it is merely trying to rein in Big Tech and protect the online space from harmful behavior. In an interview Monday, Puzder said he hoped that this week’s vote in the European Parliament to advance last year’s transatlantic trade deal would set the scene for talks to loosen constraints on business. “I’ve had talks with individuals within the EU about moving this discussion forward. I haven’t, as yet, experienced the concrete steps we need to make that happen,” Puzder said. He was referring to the EU’s tech rulebook — and the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act in particular — that Washington sees as barriers to trade. “Hopefully, we’ll continue to talk. Once this trade agreement is approved, in the spirit of moving forward with these non-tariff trade barriers, we’ll be able to break down some of these walls,” he added.  Discussions are still in their very early stages and “there’s nothing formal,” Puzder clarified. The next steps between Brussels and Washington should be “diplomatic engagement followed by political engagement,” he added.  RECALIBRATION NEGOTIATION The envoy’s comments follow a heated series of exchanges between senior American and European officials over whether the EU’s tech rules should even be part of the transatlantic trade discussion. In November 2025, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick tied a potential easing of U.S. steel and aluminum tariffs to a “recalibration” by the EU of the bloc’s digital regulations. European Commission Executive Vice President Teresa Ribera responded that tying tariff relief to European tech rules amounted to “blackmail.” Ribera, the EU’s top competition official, told POLITICO at the time that the EU would not accept such attempts to strong-arm it on a topic that it considers to be a matter of sovereignty. She is currently visiting the U.S. and is due to meet tech industry bosses in San Francisco this week. Transatlantic ties took another turn for the worse when the Donald Trump administration in December barred former Industry Commissioner Thierry Breton from traveling to the U.S. over his role in creating and implementing the EU’s tech rules.  Puzder explained that Washington doesn’t think “that Europe shouldn’t have regulation,” but that it shouldn’t be “regulating in such an extreme manner that companies feel they can’t innovate — which is why … most of the tech startups in Europe end up moving to Silicon Valley.” European Commission Vice President Teresa Ribera attends a press conference in Brussels on Feb. 25, 2026. | Dursun Aydemir/Anadolu via Getty Images Responding, the European Commission stressed there is “continued engagement” between the EU and the U.S.  “Executive Vice President [Henna] Virkkunen has held several meetings with U.S. Representatives, both in Europe and in the U.S. At technical level, our teams also engage on a continuous basis with their American counterparts,” spokesperson Thomas Regnier said in a statement to POLITICO.  Virkunnen’s remit covers technology policy. Before Trump’s return to the White House, the two sides held held a structured dialogue under the auspices of the now-defunct EU-U.S. Trade and Technology Council.  The occasional forum, launched by former U.S. President Joe Biden, sought to establish a structured dialogue around regulatory cooperation. Yet in the view of observers it under-delivered, failing for instance to resolve a long-running steel dispute. The TTC has not met since Trump returned to the White House in early 2025. 

When German historian Rainer Zitelmann reposted a photo of Adolf Hitler to warn against appeasing Russian President Vladimir Putin, he didn’t expect it to trigger a police probe. According to police, the problem was the image itself: Hitler was shown wearing a swastika armband — a banned symbol under Germany’s criminal code, which prohibits the public display of Nazi and other extremist insignia. Zitelmann was informed in February that authorities were examining the case. Zitelmann’s is just one of several recent investigations into online speech, which have raised questions about how far German authorities are going in enforcing strict speech laws — and whether efforts to curb extremism are colliding with satire and political criticism. Zitelmann said he posted the image as a warning, not an endorsement. Like Hitler, Putin cannot be trusted when he says he has no further territorial ambitions. “I’m usually against Hitler analogies,” he said. “They’re often inaccurate and used to discredit political opponents.”  But, he added, ”the parallels practically impose themselves.” A week earlier, a journalist found himself in a similar situation for mocking the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.  In a podcast, Jan Fleischhauer suggested the party’s youth wing, known as “Generation Germany,” might be better named “Generation Germany awake” — a reference to a banned Nazi slogan. Fleischhauer’s case comes after police had searched conservative commentator Norbert Bolz’s home in October for using the same slogan to mock a left-wing newspaper that had called for the AfD to be banned. “A good translation for ‘woke’: Germany awake!” Bolz had written. Fleischhauer reacted to his investigation with humor. “Maybe [the complaint was filed] … by an AfD supporter who was annoyed that I made fun of the AfD youth wing,” he said.  But, he warned, such cases risk chilling free speech. Jan Fleischhauer at the 69th Frankfurt Book Fair in Frankfurt am Main in October 2017. | Frank May/picture alliance via Getty Images “I come from the 1968 generation,” Fleischhauer said. “I thought the path of free speech had been cleared once and for all by the ’68 movement. But as we can see, all of that can be rolled back.” TRADEOFF The cases highlight a tension at the heart of Germany’s postwar legal order: how to guard against extremism without restricting free expression. After World War II, lawmakers — encouraged by the occupying Allied powers — moved swiftly to ban symbols of the country’s Nazi past, seeking to prevent fascism from reasserting itself. Critics now argue authorities are going too far. Wolfgang Kubicki, deputy leader of the pro-business Free Democrats, wants the law scrapped or narrowed. “If one wants to keep it, it would have to be limited strictly to explicit endorsement of National Socialist ideology,” he said. “At the moment, it has become vague and ill-defined. The legislature urgently needs to change that.” But others warn that loosening the rules could embolden extremists.  Lena Gumnior speaks to MPs in the plenary chamber of the German Bundestag on May 16, 2025. | Katharina Kausche/picture alliance via Getty Images “The point is not to allow governments to suppress political expression, but rather to protect the principles of our liberal constitution,” said Lena Gumnior, a Green lawmaker. “It is about strictly prohibiting the use of unconstitutional symbols, particularly those associated with National Socialism, in order to protect our democracy.” A separate provision of Germany’s criminal code — which designates it an offense to insult or belittle a politician — also sparked controversy recently. In January, a retiree came under investigation after posting a Facebook comment about Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s visit to his town: “Pinocchio is coming,” he wrote, adding a long-nose “lying” emoji.  That case drew the attention of U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration, prompting a a post by Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy Sarah Rogers, who has taken a strong stance against European laws that regulate online speech. “Most Germans I’ve talked to don’t want their laws applied this way,” she wrote. “When you’re regulating speech at scale, on platforms based in America (whose American users, especially, deserve First Amendment protection), this creates problems worth solving.” German authorities have dropped the probes into Fleischhauer and the Pinocchio emoji. The investigation into Zitelmann was still open as of Friday. For Matthias Cornils, a law professor at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, the outcome matters more than the investigations themselves. “Courts often reject criminal liability, even in quite harsh cases,” he said. “The strong constitutional protection of freedom of expression, developed over decades, remains intact.”

BRUSSELS — Elon Musk’s X has met its deadline for the €120 million fine issued by the EU in December, a European Commission spokesperson confirmed. The cooperation with the EU comes as X continues a legal challenge against the decision. Under the ruling announced in December, X had a deadline this month to pay the fine and to offer remedies on the design of blue checkmarks for verified accounts on its service. “Both of them have been done,” Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier said. Meeting the deadline means X either paying the fine or offering a financial guarantee that it will do so should its appeal against the fine fail. “One of the two options” has been met, Regnier said, adding: “The Commission is really not in the habit of communicating about financial transactions happening between private businesses and the Commission.” X declined to comment for this story. The Commission in December found X in breach of the EU’s platform law, the Digital Services Act, for the design of blue checkmarks and for failing to meet transparency obligations. Both Musk and U.S. Republicans expressed strong dissatisfaction with the fine when it was issued, describing it as an attack on free speech. The company is appealing the decision at the Court of Justice of the European Union. It also submitted a proposal to address the design of its blue checkmarks on March 10. X has until April 28 to submit remedies on the other two counts where they accuse the platform of breaches: advertising and data transparency. The Commission will analyze X’s proposal to see if it addresses the concerns and could impose further penalties should X fail to implement them.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez on Wednesday unveiled a new government AI tool that will rank social media sites based on how much hate speech they host. “If hate is already dangerous, social networks have turned it into a weapon of mass polarization that ends up seeping into everyday life,” Sánchez said at an International Summit against Hate and Digital Harassment. “Today social networks are a failed state,” he said. The new system, known as HODIO, will analyze large volumes of publicly available activity on social media to measure the scale and spread of online hate speech. The data will be used to track how hateful content evolves and spreads on platforms, and will feed into a public ranking comparing how much hate speech circulates on major networks. The European Union has rolled out laws and regulations like the Digital Services Act to crack down on illegal and harmful online content. The rules have drawn the ire of the United States’ administration, which sees them as online censorship. The new Spanish hate speech tool comes as Sanchéz repeatedly clashed with U.S. President Donald Trump last week over the conflict in Iran. The Spanish prime minister said the initiative is aimed at holding platforms accountable for how their algorithms amplify polarizing content, and added that the government plans to introduce a legal offense for “algorithmic amplification” of hate speech. Sánchez launched a broader push for stricter digital regulation last month and wants to ban social media access for users under 16.

BRUSSELS — The European Parliament’s far-right groups are seeking a public debate over what they claim is national election interference by Brussels, in the wake of a divisive report from the U.S. Congress. It marks the latest escalation of a fight over the EU’s social media regulations and the limits of online speech. The EU institutions and political groups to the center and left claim the bloc’s laws to regulate online hate speech and illegal content are protecting people, whereas groups to the right say these laws are politically biased and hinder free expression. A U.S. committee in February released a report alleging that the Commission was using its regulations, including the Digital Services Act, to meddle in national elections. The Commission has repeatedly denied these allegations. In a note Wednesday, the Patriots for Europe group said it was formally requesting a plenary debate “on the European Commission’s interference in national elections across Europe” following the report by the U.S. House Judiciary Committee — citing evidence from the report that “the Commission intervened around national elections, pressuring platforms to police lawful political speech during campaign periods.” The Commission maintains that it doesn’t interfere in national elections and that its work is to support EU countries in tackling misinformation. The hard-right European Conservatives and Reformists and the far-right Europe of Sovereign Nations backed the proposal for a debate but it didn’t get enough support for it to be added to the Parliament’s agenda next week. The Patriots are instead considering using their right to hold a so-called topical debate on the matter in April, Belgian far-right lawmaker Tom Vandendriessche told POLITICO. That would be part of a “step-by-step-plan” to keep the topic high on the political agenda, he said. Hungarian lawmaker Kinga Gál, a vice president of the Patriots, said on X she confronted the European Commission’s Executive Vice President Henna Virkkunen on Wednesday on the findings but received “no substantive answer.” “They do everything to sweep this matter under the rug. We, the Patriots, will not let this happen,” Gál said. “The refusal to permit a simple debate at the next plenary speaks volumes. Institutions with nothing to hide do not fear questions. We will make sure those questions are asked and answered,” Polish far-right MEP Stanisław Tyszka told POLITICO.

BRUSSELS — Right-wing lawmakers told former EU Commissioner Thierry Breton that he deserved to be sanctioned by the United States during a fiery hearing in the European Parliament on Wednesday. Breton spoke to the Parliament’s internal market committee alongside three civil society representatives who were in December banned from traveling to the U.S. because of their work on the EU’s digital laws. Most of the lawmakers expressed warm support from Breton, who worked with them on passing the EU’s Digital Services Act that the Donald Trump administration is going after. Yet there was notable dissent from lawmakers on the right and far-right as the debate split along political lines. Polish right-wing lawmaker Piotr Müller told the hearing that Breton’s actions during his time in office were reminiscent of Soviet-style censorship. Lawmakers on the left meanwhile suggested the EU Commission should suspend access for American government representatives to its premises, a move that would severely restrict contacts with Washington. Wednesday’s hearing comes amid an ongoing fight between Washington and Brussels over the EU’s digital rules. The White House and its allies claim the DSA is a censorship regime that also affects U.S. citizens and restricts free speech. The Commission says it censors neither Europeans nor Americans, and argues instead that the EU protects all users online and promotes free expression by blocking illegal and harmful content and misinformation. Referring to a letter Breton sent X owner Elon Musk in 2024, Müller said that Breton’s decision to threaten Musk over a planned live interview with then-presidential candidate Donald Trump was “a clear case in point when political instruments are used to actually hamper the freedom of speech.” Müller, who represents the European Conservatives and Reformists Group, said ahead of the hearing that the letter amounted to “a blatant attempt to interfere” in the U.S. elections. “Actions have consequences and this episode inevitably shaped perceptions in Washington,” he told POLITICO. While Breton said at the time that the interview could include misinformation that would spread in the EU, and that the Commission could block X as a result, some within the Commission said he was overreaching to gain attention. Breton resigned a few weeks later, after Commission President Ursula von der Leyen asked for his candidacy for another term to be withdrawn. Multiple lawmakers stood by the French former commissioner at Wednesday’s hearing and called on the Commission to show stronger support. French member of The Left, Leila Chaibi, asked the EU executive to suspend access badges of members of the U.S. mission to the EU and the American Chamber of Commerce. Other MEPs said the attack on Breton was an attack on the whole institution. French liberal MEP Sandro Gozi noted the Trump administration could have banned as many as 565 officials from entering the U.S., based on the number of MEPs that voted for the DSA and the number of EU commissioners in office. “We are all guilty. I plead guilty here to have defended our values, our democracy, by approving our digital legislation,” Gozi said. Breton, addressing lawmakers via video link, said he wasn’t the “mastermind” behind the EU’s digital laws but part of a “tremendous team” that was working “together to protect our fellow citizens.” Breton told POLITICO in an interview last month that the travel ban was “unjustified” and reflected a fundamental misunderstanding of how Europe regulates free speech. The Commission said it was standing by Breton. “The Commission has adopted a decision granting [Breton] financial assistance to seek legal advice and assistance to challenge the decision taken by the U.S. administration,” spokesperson Ricardo Cardoso said in an emailed statement.

French President Emmanuel Macron has asked U.S. President Donald Trump to lift sanctions imposed last year on a raft of prominent Europeans including former EU tech chief Thierry Breton, arguing the measures were “unjustly imposed.” “I would like to personally draw your attention to the sanctions imposed by the United States against several European citizens, including two Frenchmen, Nicolas Guillou, judge at the International Criminal Court, and Thierry Breton, former European Commissioner,” Macron wrote to his U.S. counterpart in a letter sent last week, according to a report on Sunday by La Tribune. “I ask you to reconsider these decisions of your administration and to lift the sanctions unjustly imposed on Nicolas Guillou and Thierry Breton,” he added. Breton and Guillou were among a host of European citizens to be sanctioned by the White House as it targeted European leaders and institutions that it accused of undermining U.S. interests. Sanctioned citizens are blocked from accessing the U.S. and using American tech and payment services. Breton, formerly in charge of the EU’s tech portfolio, was among the most prominent EU officials to be sanctioned, with Washington citing his key role in designing the Digital Services Act, a landmark tech rulebook aimed at making social media giants more transparent. The DSA was used as the basis for a major fine on American social media platform X last year — provoking outrage in Washington. Guillou was sanctioned after the ICC issued arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in connection with Israel’s invasion of the Gaza Strip.

Elon Musk’s X has challenged in court a €120 million fine imposed by the European Commission for breaching EU tech rules. The fine, issued in December, was a landmark moment in the EU’s implementation of its platform rules, the Digital Services Act (DSA), and marked a point of no return in its sparring with the United States over the same rules. “This EU decision resulted from an incomplete and superficial investigation, grave procedural errors, a tortured interpretation of the obligations under the DSA, and systematic breaches of rights of defense and basic due-process requirements suggesting prosecutorial bias,” X’s Global Government Affairs team said on the platform on Friday. The fine was the first under the DSA and was levied due to breaches in transparency obligations and the allegedly deceptive design of X’s blue checkmarks. Three cases were lodged against the Commission in the Court of Justice of the European Union’s docket on Feb. 16. One is from X Internet Unlimited Company and X Holdings, another from xAI Holdings and one that appears to be from tech mogul Elon Musk himself. The Commission’s fine was addressed to all of these entities, according to a version of the decision subpoenaed and published by a U.S. congressional committee. “This landmark case is the first judicial challenge to a DSA fine and could set important precedents for enforcement, penalty calculations, and fundamental rights protections under the 2022 regulation,” the X team said in its post. The news was first reported by MLex.

A court in Germany on Tuesday ordered Elon Musk’s social media site X to hand over data related to the upcoming election in Hungary to researchers for scrutiny. The court in Berlin ruled in favor of rights group Democracy Reporting International in its bid to access data to research influence campaigns and disinformation in the election. The group took its case to court after X in November refused its data access requests. The European Union’s rules for social media platforms, the Digital Services Act, obliges big online platforms like X to grant external researchers access to data to scrutinize how platforms handle risks, including election interference. The European Commission in December fined X €40 million for breaching that obligation, as part of a €120 million levy. Hungarians head to the polls in April, in a contested election that is a crucial test for longtime leader Viktor Orbán, who faces fierce opposition from his rival Péter Magyar. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio met Orbán in Budapest on Monday, after U.S. President Donald Trump already endorsed the far-right populist leader this month. Musk, who owns X, has also waded into European politics in Germany, the United Kingdom and elsewhere. X did not respond to POLITICO’s request for comment at the time of publication. The election is critical to Brussels’ establishment as well, POLITICO reported earlier, as Orbán frequently clashes with Brussels and other European capitals over support for Ukraine, LGBTQ+ rights and Russia sanctions. Last year, Democracy Reporting International lost a similar case before a Berlin court for access to data on the German elections. The new ruling could set a precedent for other organizations in Germany seeking access to data. “The online space should not be a black box,” said Michael Meyer-Resende, the rights group’s executive director. The case was supported by the Society for Civil Rights and law firm Hausfeld.