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What are you waiting for, Brussels?
Elon Musk’s decision to host German far-right leader Alice Weidel in a livestream on X is sparking fury from European Union leaders and lawmakers, who on Monday urged Brussels to deploy its full legal might to rein in the billionaire tech magnate.
In response, the European Commission said the SpaceX founder and senior member of the incoming Trump administration could indeed land in legal hot water under the terms of the EU’s new digital rulebook, depending on the extent to which the Thursday livestream is seen as unfairly boosting Weidel over rivals ahead of Germany’s Feb. 23 election.
Across Europe, teaming up with Weidel is seen as an inflammatory step as members of her populist and anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party have for years been accused of whitewashing and trivializing Nazi crimes. The AfD is currently polling second.
French President Emmanuel Macron was quick to accuse Musk of having gone too far in his vocal support for the AfD. “Ten years ago, who could have imagined it if we had been told that the owner of one of the largest social networks in the world would support a new international reactionary movement and intervene directly in elections, including in Germany,” he said in a speech at the Elysée Palace.
The pressure is now on the European Commission to respond, given that it is in charge of enforcing Europe’s Digital Services Act, which polices social media platforms including X, and threatens eye-watering fines of up to 6 percent of global turnover, or even temporary blocks, in case of a breach.
Unfair advantage
The key problem that Musk would face legally under the DSA concerns not so much content as the extent to which exposure on a platform as large as X would give the AfD an unfair public advantage over its rivals before a vote.
Former EU digital enforcer Thierry Breton said Saturday that Weidel will be offered a “significant and valuable advantage” over her competitors and reminded Musk to adhere to his EU social media law obligations.
German Greens lawmaker Alexandra Geese defined the problem as follows: “Elon Musk chatting with AfD leader Alice Weidel on X is covered by freedom of expression. His algorithmic manipulation, [which] is intentionally flooding German X timelines with far-right propaganda and drowning out progressive content, is not.”
When confronted by such questions as to whether Musk could improperly boost Weidel’s political agenda with Thursday’s livestream, Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier said there was a special burden on very large platforms regarding presenting content that posed “risks for electoral processes.”
“’How much is [it] or will it be boosted?’ This is what the Commission will be looking at,” he said, noting that Brussels had already been studying X’s compliance with the DSA for more than a year.
Regnier added that the Commission, German regulators and X would meet for a roundtable discussion Jan. 24 to discuss risks related to the February election.
Brussels has already had its fair share of run-ins with Musk. Breton himself notoriously received a meme from Musk instructing him to “f*** your own face.”
Political will
Pursuing legal action against a major tech tycoon would be tricky enough, but the EU’s headaches are exacerbated by the fact that in 13 days’ time, Musk will become part of the United States administration as head of the Department of Government Efficiency.
“Musk must be seen as representing the U.S. president when he bets against the leadership of key European nations, allies until now,” former member of the European Parliament and Stanford University fellow Marietje Schaake wrote in an email.
Quite simply, by threatening probes or even a fine, the EU now risks a major confrontation with the Washington administration.
“Whether the EU Commission chooses to act will depend on a combination of technical evidence and political will,” said Felix Kartte, a senior fellow at Germany’s Mercator Foundation. “The question is essentially whether EU leaders are prepared to choose confrontation with the Trump administration before it has formally taken office.”
Despite the political dimension, Kartte argued there could still be a case for Musk to answer.
“If Musk’s engineered prominence generates public risks, such as amplifying illegal hate speech or undermining media pluralism, regulators could argue that X is failing its risk mitigation obligations under the DSA,” he said.
In the European Parliament, some are also pushing Brussels to check whether Musk’s actions are legal under the DSA.
In a question addressed to the Commission’s tech czar, Henna Virkkunen, German European lawmaker Damian Boeselager raised concerns about Musk’s possible use of a multiplier for his content, which would mean “he undermined the neutrality of the algorithm for the benefit of his own reach.”
“What I’m trying to find out is if Musk is using a large information platform that he owns in ways which could diminish the freedom of speech of others, by hard-coding a multiplier into his own reach,” he clarified in remarks shared with POLITICO.
Other lawmakers have expressed their concerns about Musk’s use of X to supercharge his own visibility, urging Brussels to investigate.
The burden of enforcing the DSA now falls to Virkkunen, who took over from Breton after his resignation last summer. Breton had faced pushback from his colleagues inside the EU executive after addressing a letter to Musk warning him of potential consequences for boosting certain parties or figures.
Breton may have left Brussels, but he hasn’t gone quiet about Musk.
On the contrary, he has once again warned both Weidel and Musk about their upcoming livestream, urging his platform to “fully respect all its obligations under our EU law.”
