Briton Imran Ahmed, one of five Europeans sanctioned by the United States for advocating stricter regulation of technology, has filed a complaint against the administration of President Donald Trump. The activist lives legally in the United States and the action aims to avoid his deportation. The French press highlights this Friday (26) the “digital cold war” declared between Washington and Brussels.
This is an unprecedented escalation, say French newspapers. Sanctions against five European defenders of the regulation of big technologies are unprecedented. The symbol of the conflict is Frenchman Thierry Breton, former European commissioner and architect of the bloc’s digital services law. He and four directors of European NGOs were refused visas and are now persona non grata in the United States, underlines the daily The Parisian.
Reason for the sanction: Washington accuses the European Union (EU) of imposing rules that “censor” American platforms and threatens to extend the list of people banned. Secretary of State Marco Rubio justified the measure as a fight against the “global censorship industrial complex.”
This measure follows months of tension since Trump’s return to power in January, including threats of customs duties and investigations against European companies (Spotify, Siemens, Mistral AI) if Brussels does not relax its digital laws.
For the moment, the European Commission has “strongly” condemned this decision. The bloc says the rules were democratically approved and objectively applied. Buxelas promises to react to defend its regulatory autonomy. Macron called the sanctions “intimidation” and reaffirmed the EU’s digital sovereignty.
European resistance
The five sanctioned Europeans now represent the European resistance, according to the newspaper The Echoes. This “digital cold war” risks evolving into an open commercial confrontation between the two blocs, underlines the economic newspaper. In an editorial, the daily wonders if the time has come for Brussels to be equally aggressive and react in the same way, with sanctions that would deprive the Americans of the largest market in the world.
The newspaper Le Figaro says Europe is seeking a response to US sanctions, in a context where the bloc depends on American technology and does not have tech sector giants like the United States. The conservative daily also underlines that this tension marks an unprecedented escalation between the two camps.
“Has this new humiliation crossed the limits for the European Union? ask him Le Figarowhich recalls other episodes such as the tariff agreement signed by the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, on a Trump golf course. This discredit is seen as a threat to European sovereignty.
British man sues Trump administration
The conservative newspaper also points out that the Briton Imran Ahmed, one of the five Europeans sanctioned, filed a complaint against the Trump administration. Washington accuses the activist’s NGO, which fights against disinformation and hate speech on the Internet, of having campaigned against 12 anti-vaccine figures in the United States, including the Secretary of Health and Social Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
A New York judge accepted the complaint filed on Thursday (25), temporarily blocking a possible unconstitutional arrest, punitive detention and deportation of Ahmed. A preliminary hearing was scheduled for next Monday (29) in this case.
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