Gafam: Washington bans visas from five Europeans, including Frenchman Thierry Breton

A radical decision. The United States announced this Tuesday sanctions targeting five European personalities committed to strict regulation of tech, who are banned from staying, including a former European commissioner, the Frenchman Thierry Breton.

The actions of these people amount to “censorship” to the detriment of American interests, the State Department justified.

“For too long, European ideologues have taken concerted actions to force American platforms to sanction American opinions to which they oppose,” declared the head of American diplomacy Marco Rubio on X. “The Trump administration will no longer tolerate these blatant acts of extraterritorial censorship,” he added.

Frenchman Thierry Breton was European Commissioner for the Internal Market from 2019 to 2024, with broad skills in particular on digital and industrial issues. He has repeatedly been very critical of Donald Trump’s policies.

An offensive against EU rules

Among the other people sanctioned are representatives of NGOs fighting against disinformation and hateful messages online including Imran Ahmed, Clare Melford, Anna-Lena von Hodenberg, founder of HateAid, a German NGO, as well as Josephine Ballon, from the same association.

American President Donald Trump is leading a major offensive targeting European Union rules on tech which impose obligations on platforms in particular to report problematic content, which the United States judges to be censorship.

The EU actually has the most powerful legal arsenal in the world to regulate digital technology.