By Sudip Kar-Gupta and Charlotte Van Campenhout
PARIS, Dec 24 (Reuters) - The European Union, France and Germany condemned U.S. visa bans on five Europeans combating online hate and disinformation on Wednesday, after President Donald Trump's administration took its latest swipe at long-standing allies across the Atlantic.
Washington imposed visa bans on Tuesday on five European citizens, including French former EU commissioner Thierry Breton. It accuses them of working to censor freedom of speech or unfairly target U.S. tech giants with burdensome regulation.
The bans mark a fresh escalation against Europe, a region Washington argues is fast becoming irrelevant due to its weak defences, inability to tackle immigration, needless red tape and "censorship" of far-right and nationalist voices to keep them from power.
EUROPEANS FORCED TO RETHINK TRANSATLANTIC TIES
They come just weeks after a U.S. National Security Strategy document warned Europe faced "civilizational erasure" and must course-correct if it is to remain a reliable U.S. ally.
That document - and other comments by senior Trump officials, including a bombshell February speech by Vice President JD Vance in Munich - have upended postwar assumptions about Europe's close relationship with its strongest ally, and concentrated minds across European capitals on the urgent need to diversify away from reliance on U.S. technology and defence.
In Brussels, Paris and Berlin, senior officials condemned the U.S. bans, and defended Europe's right to legislate on how foreign companies operate locally.
A European Commission spokesperson said it "strongly condemns the U.S. decision", adding: "Freedom of expression is a fundamental right in Europe and a shared core value with the United States across the democratic world."
The spokesperson said the EU would seek answers from Washington, but said it could "respond swiftly and decisively" against the "unjustified measures".
French President Emmanuel Macron, who has been travelling across France to warn about the dangers that disinformation poses to democracy, said he had spoken with Breton and thanked him for his work.
"We will not give up, and we will protect Europe's independence and the freedom of Europeans," Macron said on X.
DSA ANGERS DC
Breton, a former French finance minister and the European commissioner for the internal market from 2019 to 2024, was one of the architects of the EU's Digital Services Act.
A landmark piece of legislation, the DSA aims to make the internet safer by compelling tech giants to do more to tackle illegal content, including hate speech and child sexual abuse material.
But the DSA has riled the Trump administration, which accuses the EU of placing "undue" restrictions on freedom of expression in its efforts to combat hateful speech, misinformation and disinformation. It also argues that the DSA unfairly targets U.S. tech giants and U.S. citizens.
Trump officials were particularly upset earlier this month when Brussels' sanctioned Elon Musk's X platform, fining it 120 million euros for breaching online content rules. Musk and Breton have often sparred online over EU tech regulation, with Musk referring to him as the "tyrant of Europe".
Breton, the most high-profile individual targeted, wrote on X: "Is McCarthy's witch hunt back?"
GERMANY SAYS BANS ON ACTIVISTS 'UNACCEPTABLE'
The bans also targeted Imran Ahmed, the British CEO of the U.S.-based Center for Countering Digital Hate; Anna-Lena von Hodenberg and Josephine Ballon of the German non-profit HateAid; and Clare Melford, co-founder of the Global Disinformation Index, according to U.S. Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy Sarah Rogers.
Germany's justice ministry said the two German activists had the government's "support and solidarity" and the visa bans on them were unacceptable, adding that HateAid supported people affected by unlawful digital hate speech.
"Anyone who describes this as censorship is misrepresenting our constitutional system," it said in a statement. "The rules by which we want to live in the digital space in Germany and in Europe are not decided in Washington."
Britain said it was committed to upholding the right to free speech.
"While every country has the right to set its own visa rules, we support the laws and institutions which are working to keep the internet free from the most harmful content," a British government spokesperson said in a statement.
A Global Disinformation Index spokesperson called the visa bans "an authoritarian attack on free speech and an egregious act of government censorship."
"The Trump Administration is, once again, using the full weight of the federal government to intimidate, censor, and silence voices they disagree with," they said. "Their actions today are immoral, unlawful, and un-American."
Breton is not the first French person to be sanctioned by the Trump administration.
In August, Washington sanctioned French judge Nicolas Yann Guillou, who sits on the International Criminal Court, for the tribunal's targeting of Israeli leaders and a past decision to investigate U.S. officials.
(Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta, Gabriel Stargardter, Sarah Marsh and Sam Tabahriti; Editing by Michael Perry and Alex Richardson)
