Donald Trump’s return to the White House gives his ally Elon Musk a major advantage in the ongoing standoff with EU tech regulators — who may now think twice before fining his X platform over disinformation concerns.
The world’s richest man – the boss of Tesla and SpaceX as well as the former Twitter owner – has thrown his weight behind Trump’s campaign to reclaim the US presidency.
Elon Musk backed Republicans with hard cash, but also used his far-reaching social media platforms to push pro-Trump messages, including inflammatory disinformation, to his more than 200 million followers.
The gambit was largely successful, with the victorious Trump handpicking Musk for a bigger role in bringing about radical changes in the US government – and putting Brussels in an uncomfortable position.
As the EU continues to rely on US support to keep an aggressive Russia away from its borders, can it really afford to upset Trump by going after a prized ally?
Trump’s future Vice President J.D. Vance also mused during the campaign that Washington might drop support for NATO if the EU balked at efforts to regulate Musk’s X Network under a landmark new content law.
“American power comes with certain conditions. One of them is respect for freedom of expression, especially among our European allies,” he warned.
For Musk, hostility toward the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) is about more than just trade: Along with supporters of the American right he portrays it as an ideological fight against censorship.
“The election in the US will not affect our enforcement work,” a spokesman for the European Commission, the powerful technology enforcer for the 27-nation European Union, told AFP.
But experts are not so sure.
Billions of fines?
Musk’s
The charges are part of a broader DSA investigation into how X deals with the dissemination of illegal content and information manipulation.
Each offense could theoretically be fined up to six percent of the annual global turnover of all companies controlled by Musk – which could reach billions.
According to multiple sources close to the proceedings, the Commission was completing its investigation – and preparing to impose a hefty fine – when its digital chief Thierry Breton stepped down in September, having been handed a second term by EU chief Ursula von der Leyen. Had refused.
But since then the stars have aligned, with the EU now in the headlines over fears that the volatile Trump will start a trade war and cut support for Ukraine against Russian aggression.
‘Inciting’ Trump?
With Trump taking office, enforcing EU technical rules against X could become as much a matter of politics as anything else.
“I would be surprised if the Commission chooses to provoke Trump over something like this,” said Alexandre de Streel, an expert at the Center on Regulation in Europe (CERRE) think tank.
“Transatlantic relations are becoming more complex – and this is probably not the area where they will need to fight hardest,” he said.
De Streel said, “Musk believes the DSA goes too far in terms of asking platforms to regulate content – and far-right parties in Europe have the same view.” “It’s become a battle of ideas, and I don’t think Musk will take the lead in this – especially not now.”
The European Commission will also have to take into account Trump’s far-right allies within the bloc, from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban to Italian leader Giorgia Meloni.
Following Trump’s re-election, von der Leyen stressed the importance of an EU-US “partnership” and a “strong transatlantic agenda” – a stance reiterated by Britten’s designated successor as digital enforcer, Hanna Virkkunen.
“War is on its doorstep, so Europe must think carefully,” said Umberto Gambini of Forward Global, a European affairs consultancy. “I don’t think it can afford to upset Trump in these first months.”
Gambini predicted that the commission’s investigation into
Also in August, Brussels distanced itself from a warning letter sent by the French commissioner ahead of Trump’s live interview on X.
If Europe wants to remain credible in the fight to rein in Big Tech, it will have to “threaten fines in the billions, not the millions,” Gambini said.
But keeping in mind the delicate transatlantic ties, it may choose to focus its firepower on Chinese platforms like TikTok, an EU expert said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
