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US-based tech billionaire Elon Musk has called for the dissolution of the European Union after the bloc fined his social media platform X.<\/p>\n
On Friday, the European Commission fined X \u20ac120 million ($163 million) for\u00a0\u201cbreaching its transparency obligations\u201d<\/em>\u00a0under the 2022 Digital Services Act, which sets standards for accountability and content moderation. The ruling\u00a0called the platform\u2019s blue checkmark system \u2018deceptive\u2019\u00a0and accused it of weak advertising transparency and failing to provide required data access.<\/p>\n In a series of posts on Saturday, Musk, who often accuses Brussels of imposing excessive regulations, argued that\u00a0\u201cEU bureaucracy is slowly smothering Europe to death.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cThe EU should be abolished and sovereignty returned to individual countries, so that governments can better represent their people,\u201d<\/em>\u00a0Musk wrote, calling the bloc a\u00a0\u201cbureaucratic Monster.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Musk, who also owns Tesla and SpaceX, has previously described the EU as a\u00a0\u201cgiant cathedral to bureaucracy,\u201d<\/em>\u00a0arguing that over-regulation suppresses innovation.<\/p>\n US Secretary of State Marco Rubio criticized the ruling as\u00a0\u201can attack on all American tech platforms and the American people by foreign governments.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0US Vice President J.D. Vance said the EU had targeted X for\u00a0\u201cnot engaging in censorship.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n US Ambassador to the EU Andrew Puzder also condemned the move, saying Washington\u00a0\u201copposes censorship and will challenge burdensome regulations that target US companies abroad.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n European Commission Executive Vice President for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy Henna Virkkunen defended the fine, saying that\u00a0\u201cdeceiving users with blue checkmarks, obscuring information on ads and shutting out researchers have no place online in the EU.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski reacted to Musk\u2019s tirade by posting,\u00a0\u201cGo to Mars. There\u2019s no censorship of Nazi salutes there,\u201d<\/em>\u00a0referring to accusations that the entrepreneur had performed the salute while celebrating US President Donald Trump\u2019s second-term inauguration in January 2025.<\/p>\n