The US authorities is in search of to affix Elon Musk’s authorized problem to overturn a €120m (£105m) EU high quality in opposition to X over its blue tick badges.
In December 2025, the European Fee said the platform “deceives customers” by permitting folks to pay for a blue verified test mark, as a result of it’s not “meaningfully verifying” who’s behind the account.
However US Assistant Lawyer Normal Brett A. Shumate mentioned on Thursday that the fee had “inappropriately tried” to broaden its attain to American corporations exterior its management.
Musk, who spent hundreds of thousands serving to elect Donald Trump and different Republicans, has beforehand claimed EU tech regulation “inhibits progress” for corporations.
The US Division of Justice (DOJ) has filed an application, external with the EU’s Normal Court docket in assist of Musk’s and X’s makes an attempt to dismiss the case.
It claims that beneath a piece of regulation within the Statute of the Court docket of Justice of the EU, a state could intervene in disputes earlier than the courtroom if it “can set up an curiosity in the results of the case to the courtroom”.
The DOJ mentioned the US “has a transparent curiosity” in guaranteeing any choice by the fee was utilized persistently with “how territorial jurisdiction is mostly understood in worldwide regulation”.
It additionally desires to verify it might not “in any other case prejudice” US-headquartered digital companies that “contribute considerably” to its economic system.
In a press briefing on Friday, external, European Fee spokesperson Thomas Regnier mentioned it was “able to defend” its place in courtroom.
He added that the fee had an “strong case” at its disposal, because of the alleged breach of its Digital Companies Act.
Along with its use of blue ticks, EU regulators had accused X of failing to offer transparency round its adverts and denying researchers entry to public information.
Henna Virkkunen, the regulator’s govt vice-president for tech sovereignty, mentioned on the time of the high quality’s situation it was “holding X answerable for undermining customers’ rights and evading accountability”.
“Deceiving customers with blue checkmarks, obscuring data on advertisements and shutting out researchers don’t have any place on-line within the EU,” she mentioned.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the Federal Communications Fee (FCC) had criticised the EU regulator, accusing it of attacking and censoring US corporations.
“The European Fee’s high quality is not simply an assault on X, it is an assault on all American tech platforms and the American folks by international governments,” Rubio wrote in a put up on X.
“The times of censoring Individuals on-line are over.”
His remarks had been reposted by Musk, who added “completely”.
The European Fee denied concentrating on any particular nationality, stating it’s merely defending its digital and democratic requirements to take care of its function as a world benchmark.
The motion marked the Fee’s first official non-compliance choice beneath the Digital Companies Act (DSA), considered one of two obligatory rulebooks governing on-line platforms within the EU.
Nonetheless, the EU can be conducting a number of different investigations into the platform, together with one into its integrated AI assistant Grok over considerations it was used to create sexualised photographs of actual folks.
