House Judiciary Drops ‘EU Censorship Files’ Exposing Massive Effort To Silence American Speech

A new congressional report details previously unknown facts about the EU’s years-long campaign to influence how social media companies moderate content, pressuring platforms to censor lawful American speech.

The House Judiciary Committee report, released Tuesday, relies on nonpublic documents obtained from major technology companies under subpoena. Lawmakers say the records show the European Commission pushed platforms to adopt stricter, globally applicable content moderation policies that disproportionately targeted conservative viewpoints, resulting in the removal of lawful U.S. speech.

“Though often framed as combating so-called ‘hate speech’ or ‘disinformation,’ the European Commission worked to censor true information and political speech about some of the most important policy debates in recent history—including the COVID-19 pandemic, mass migration, and transgender issues,” the report states. “After ten years, the European Commission has established sufficient control of global online speech to comprehensively suppress narratives that threaten the European Commission’s power.”

Since 2020, the European Commission has held more than 100 closed-door meetings with major platforms — including X, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube — urging companies to revise their content moderation policies, according to the report.

Among the most notable findings in the committee report was that, as early as 2020, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Vice President Věra Jourová had urged platforms to remove content that questioned official narratives regarding the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccines.