Скачать или смотреть Musk calls for abolishing EU after X fined $140M.

Musk calls for abolishing EU after X fined $140M

Elon Musk called for the dissolution of the European Union on Saturday, hours after Brussels imposed a €120 million ($140 million) fine on his social media platform X for violating the bloc's digital transparency rules.

"The EU should be abolished and sovereignty returned to individual countries, so that governments can better represent their people," Musk wrote on X. In a follow-up post, he added that "the EU bureaucracy is slowly smothering Europe to death".

The penalty, announced Friday by the European Commission, marks the first enforcement action under the Digital Services Act since the sweeping content moderation law took effect in 2023.

European regulators found X violated transparency requirements in three areas: its "deceptive" blue checkmark verification system, inadequate advertising database transparency, and blocking researchers from accessing public data.

Transatlantic Clash Over Digital Regulation

The fine triggered immediate backlash from senior Trump administration officials, escalating tensions between Washington and Brussels over tech regulation. Secretary of State Marco Rubio described the penalty as "an attack on all American tech platforms and the American people by foreign governments," adding that "the days of censoring Americans online are over".

Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau went further, arguing that European nations "cannot look to the US for their own security at the same time they affirmatively undermine the security of the US itself through the (unelected, undemocratic, and unrepresentative) EU". Vice President JD Vance had preemptively criticized the expected fine Thursday, claiming the EU was penalizing X "for not engaging in censorship".



EU Defends First Digital Services Act Penalty

European Commission Executive Vice President Henna Virkkunen defended the decision, stating that "deceiving users with blue checkmarks, obscuring information on ads and shutting out researchers have no place online in the EU". She emphasized the ruling "has nothing to do with censorship," telling reporters, "If you comply, you don't get a fine. Simple as that".

The Commission determined X's paid verification system misleads users about account authenticity, potentially exposing them to scams and impersonation fraud. X now has 60 days to address the blue checkmark violations and 90 days to submit action plans for fixing advertising transparency and researcher access issues, or face additional periodic penalties.