After a $140 million fine over X’s blue checks, ads, and research access, Elon Musk is campaigning against the E.U. itself
Photo Illustration by Nikolas Kokovlis/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Elon Musk is trying to X $TWTR out Europe. After the European Commission ruled that his social media company, X, broke the bloc’s Digital Services Act (DSA) and fined the platform $140 million, Musk told his audience the European Union should be “abolished” and accused it of smothering innovation.
“The EU should be abolished and sovereignty returned to individual countries, so that governments can better represent their people,” he wrote on X. “I mean it. Not kidding.” In a separate post, he added, “I love Europe, but not the bureaucratic monster that is the EU.”
The penalty is the first major test of the EU’s new online rulebook for “very large” platforms, and Brussels framed the fine as a transparency case, not a political one. In its decision, the Commission’s regulators said X used a “deceptive design” for its blue checkmark system, ran an ad repository that wasn’t actually transparent, and refused to give researchers access to public data — all things the Digital Services Act explicitly tries to force large platforms to fix. This fine is the first big enforcement move under the law, and X now has 60 business days to fix the blue-check system and 90 days to improve its ad library and researcher access
“Deceiving users with blue checkmarks, obscuring information on ads and shutting out researchers have no place online in the EU,” Henna Virkkunen, the executive vice president of the European Commission for Technological Sovereignty, Security, and Democracy, said in a press release. A separate DSA probe into X’s handling of illegal content and information manipulation is still underway.
Musk wrote one word under the Commission’s announcement: “Bull----” and called the EU a “tyrannical unelected bureaucracy, oppressing the people of Europe.”
Senior Trump administration officials such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Vice President JD Vance, and FCC Chairman Brendan Carr have all rushed to defend Musk — who, of course, previously worked in this administration — and cast the fine as a European attack on U.S. tech and free speech. Russian ex-president Dmitry Medvedev chimed in with a one-word “Exactly” in response to Musk’s “abolition” post. Meanwhile, European leaders, including Poland’s prime minister and Germany’s foreign minister, have pushed back, reminding Washington that the EU is supposed to be a U.S. ally, not the villain in a Musk-versus-Brussels storyline.
This latest twist marks a sharp turn from the charm phase of Musk’s EU relationship. In 2022, before he completed his purchase of what was then Twitter, Musk stood next to EU internal market commissioner Thierry Breton in a Texas factory and said the Digital Services Act was “exactly aligned with my thinking.” “I agree with everything you said, really,” he told Breton in a video the commissioner posted.
Since then, X has pulled out of the EU’s voluntary disinformation code, clashed repeatedly with Brussels over content moderation, and become the first big platform to catch a serious DSA enforcement action. The new law gives the Commission power to demand changes to algorithms, impose recurring penalties, and — in an extreme case — fine up to 6% of a company’s global turnover. The $140 million hit is a fraction of that ceiling, but it acts as a formal finding and arrives with a 60-day deadline for X to present a fix-it plan; repeat offenses get more expensive. X’s counter-move — cutting off the Commission’s long-dormant ad account and accusing officials of “deceptive” self-promotion — lands more as performance than leverage; the fine still stands.
Any Musk-related standoff matters well beyond blue checkmarks. X still has tens of millions of users in Europe, and Musk’s other projects rely on access to EU markets, spectrum, and regulators he’s now calling a threat to democracy. Musk seems to be arguing, in effect, that Europe’s union should help sell his cars, beam down his satellites, and buy into his AI ambitions — but shouldn’t exist in its current form to enforce the rules that apply to all of the above.
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