Elon Musk looks on as US President Donald Trump speaks at the US-Saudi Arabia Investment Forum at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC on November 19, 2025. Credit – Brendan Smialowski—Getty Images
Elon Musk called for the European Union (EU) to be removed in response to the exit from the bloc of a fine of $140 million against his social media platform, X. He was joined in his fury by several key officials of the Trump Administration, who also challenged the decision over the weekend.
The European Commission announced a massive fine on Friday for several violations of the Digital Services Act (DSA), citing the company’s “misleading” design of the blue X check mark for verified accounts, “non-compliance with transparency obligations,” and its failure to provide researchers with access to public data.
The fine drew an angry response from Musk and several senior officials within the Trump Administration, which has made the regulation of American technology companies in Europe a major point of contention in the relationship between the United States and Europe.
Read more: Lawmakers Unveil New Bills to Curb Big Tech’s Power and Profits
The row comes at a time when that relationship is increasingly under strain over issues of free speech, immigration, and the war in Ukraine.
Musk replied “Barin***” under a European Commission post about the fine. Then on Sunday, he called for the EU “to be abolished and sovereignty returned to individual countries, so that governments can better represent their people.”
Despite their past differences, Musk and the Trump Administration have been in lock step on the issue of technology regulation in Europe. Both CEO X and the Administration view any regulation of American technology platforms as an attack on free speech.
The European Commission, the executive body of the European Union, has denied that the DSA is about censorship. The historic law, passed in 2022, requires technology companies—including American giants like Meta and X—to remove illegal content and provide transparency about their content moderation. DSA fines can be as high as 6% of a company’s annual global revenue.
“We are not here to impose the highest fines,” the European Commission’s chief technology officer, Henna Virkkunen, said on Friday. “We’re here to make sure our digital legislation is enforced and if you comply with our rules, you don’t get fined. And it’s as simple as that.”
“I think it is very important to emphasize that DSA has nothing to do with censorship,” she told reporters.
TIME has reached out to both the European Commission and X for comment.
America and Musk vs. Europe
But Trump Administration officials have spent the past few days sounding off on social media, portraying the fine as part of a larger attack on the American technology industry and on free speech.
“The European Commission’s $140 million fine is not just an attack on X, it is an attack on all American technology platforms and the American people by foreign governments,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on X on Friday. “The days of censorship of Americans online are over.”
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr also condemned the union on Friday morning, saying the EU “is fining a successful US technology company for being a successful US technology company.”
Few have been more outspoken on tech regulation than Vice President JD Vance, who built close ties to a number of Silicon Valley titans on his way to the White House.
Read more: The Reinvention of JD Vance
“The EU should be supporting free expression not attacking American companies over garbage,” he wrote Thursday before the fine was announced.
Vance has it often spoken out against EU regulation of American technology companies and of Europe itself during the second term of President Donald Trump.
He set the tone early on, in a highly combative speech aimed at European leaders at the Munich Security Conference in February.
He singled out what he called “commissioners of the EU Commission” for plans to restrict social media in times of civil unrest, and criticized the UK for “retreating from the rights of conscience.”
He also attacked European governments for “running in fear of your own voters” and claimed that the biggest threat to Europe was not Russia, but rather immigration and the unmitigated exclusion of far-right parties in the region.
Vance specifically defended Musk during the speech, after the Tesla CEO was criticized for running in the European elections. In January, Musk appeared virtually at a rally for the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party, urging attendees to “move on” from the country’s guilt and history in the Holocaust, less than a century ago.
Read more: Elon Musk Is Strengthening Germany’s Far Right. It Will Backfire
“If American democracy can survive 10 years of scolding Greta Thunberg, you can survive a few months of Elon Musk,” said Vance in his speech in Munich.
Vance met AfD leader Alice Weidel after the speech.
The fine comes days after the administration unveiled a new national security strategy that calls for reviving the Monroe Doctrine to oppose any European interference in American affairs while “cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations.”
Several current and former European officials have pushed back against the strategy, which asserts that Europe faces the “prospect of the obliteration of civilization.”
“It’s language that one would only find coming out of some strange minds in the Kremlin,” former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt posted on X, saying the document puts the United States “on the right of the extreme right in Europe.”
“The stunning section devoted to Europe reads like a far-right pamphlet,” Gérard Araud, a former French ambassador to the United States, similarly observed on X post, noting that the document “largely confirms” perceptions that Trump is “an enemy of Europe.”
Contact us at letters@time.com.