Washington Goes to an EU Court to Defend Musk Against a €120m Fine
The American justice department has applied to intervene in the European Union’s General Court in support of X and Elon Musk, against the €120m penalty the Commission imposed in December over paid blue ticks. Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate said the Commission had “inappropriately attempted” to extend its reach to American companies beyond its control. Marco Rubio went further: the fine “isn’t just an attack on X, it’s an attack on all American tech platforms… The days of censoring Americans online are over.”
A government intervening in a foreign court on behalf of one of its own companies is unusual; doing it for a company owned by a close presidential ally, in a case about content rules, makes it a sovereignty argument rather than a commercial one. The fine was the Commission’s first non-compliance decision under the Digital Services Act, which is precisely why Brussels cannot afford to lose it — a defeat would unpick the enforcement architecture of its whole online-safety regime, with further investigations already running, including into Grok. The Commission’s spokesman Thomas Regnier said it was “ready to defend” its position and had a “solid case”. For Britain, watching from outside both jurisdictions with its own Online Safety Act, the outcome sets the weather. Watch whether the court admits the American application at all.