European officials will have the ability to completely cut off European Union citizens from certain social media platforms during times of unrest, Internal Markets Commissioner Thierry Breton has insisted.
His comments come amid increasing calls in France for social media to be censored, something Reconquête MEP Nicolas Bay describes as being part of an “authoritarian drift by the extreme centre” in the country.
Speaking to a French radio station on July 10, Breton lashed out at social media giants, accusing online platforms of failing to clamp down on calls for violence in the country during the eruption of riots last week.
He then insisted that Brussels will soon have the power to completely censor various social media platforms from August 25 when the EU’s Digital Services Act comes into full effect.
“When there is hateful content, content that calls for revolt, for example, which also calls for killing or burning cars, they will have an obligation to delete it immediately,” he said.
Breton warned that platforms that failed to censor content quickly enough could be wiped from the European internet entirely, with the bureaucrat claiming the bloc would be able to enforce such bans extremely quickly.
“We have teams who can intervene immediately,” he said.
“If [social media firms] don’t act immediately, then yes, at that point we’ll be able not only to impose a fine but also to prohibit their operations within our territory.”
Breton’s comments came in relation to a question regarding French President Emmanuel Macron’s desire to censor social media amid the outbreak of countrywide violence in France.
Blaming the unrest in part on the likes of Instagram and TikTok, Macron claimed it was time for France to consider “the bans that need to be put in place” in relation to such platforms.
He added that the government should have the power to entirely “cut off” such services if and when it deems necessary.
Speaking to Brussels Signal, Bay described Macron’s plea for censorship as an attempt to “hide reality”, adding that Breton’s support for any such proposal was “scandalous”.
Bay argued that the censorship push was an attempt by Macron to get France’s “migratory chaos and its consequences” under control, as well as to curb public criticism.
“It is in this context that we need to understand Macron’s desire to censor social networks even more,” he said.
“It’s a clear attempt to hide reality, so that the population ignores it. This is a serious attack on freedom of expression and information.”
“It is scandalous that Thierry Breton, Macron’s aide who appointed him to the [European] Commission, sees no problem with this,” Bay added.
“As usual, the Commission claims to be the guarantor of freedoms, but in reality it serves the liberal-authoritarian ideology that is taking alarming shape in many European countries.”
Although also evoking comparisons with authoritarian regimes in China or Iran among other critics, the proposed move appears to be popular with the French public, with one recent survey claiming that around 69 per cent of the country would support such emergency shutdowns.
Still, more appear to be in support of tougher crackdowns on foreigners in France, with 71 per cent demanding a reduction of inward migration, while 75 per cent said they want to see French citizenship stripped from rioters who hailed from two or more countries.
