The EU’s far-reaching new laws to regulate tech companies including X and Facebook will face their first big test on Thursday night when former Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s interview with Vladimir Putin is aired in the US.
A spokesperson for the European Commission said it anticipated that the interview would provide a platform for Putin’s “twisted desire to reinstate” the Russian empire.
“We can all assume what Putin might say. I mean he is a chronic liar,” said the EU’s spokesperson for foreign affairs.
The interview has raised concerns within the EU that it will be used as part of Putin’s wider “information war”, with the likelihood that clips would spread across social media, particularly on Elon Musk’s X platform, providing the Russian leader with a propaganda coup.
However, at the daily press conference of the European Commission officials made clear that X and other platforms would be obliged to remove illegal content under the bloc’s Digital Services Act, which came into force last year.
The law is aimed at stamping out illegal content or harmful content that incites violence or hate speech from social media.
All the large platforms, bar X, have signed up to a code of conduct to help them accelerate and build their internal procedures in order to comply with the law.
Musk’s platform is currently under formal investigation over alleged failure to comply with the new law.
The onus is on platforms to ensure content is lawful, said a spokesperson for the digital tsar, Thierry Breton. But he added: “They need to expeditiously remove content they are aware of if it is illegal.”
“This is a new law; we have never been here before,” said one insider, adding there had not been any contact with Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg of Meta relating to the interview as the onus was entirely theirs to operate legally in the EU.
If a social media platform does not comply with the new EU law it can be sanctioned with a hefty fine, or banned from operating in the EU.
The foreign affairs spokesperson pointed out that Putin and a wide network of oligarchs and other associates had already been issued with sanctions in the EU but said there had been “no discussion” of doing the same with Carlson, as had been suggested by some, over the interview.
Asked if the Putin interview was not a justifiable opportunity to counter the “one-sided media” operating in Brussels, as Carlson has characterised it, the foreign affairs spokesperson said Putin was killing people, bombing infrastructure and conducting a disinformation campaign that “is directed against the European Union and is considered as a threat to our societies”.
“And he is trying to kill as many Ukrainians as he can for no reason. There is only one reason for his twisted desire to reinstate the now imperialistic Russian empire where he controls everything in his neighbourhood and imposes his will. But this is not something we are able to tolerate or are willing to tolerate in Europe or the world in the 21st century.”
Carlson is a former Fox News host, a key ally of 2024 election candidate Donald Trump, and a vocal opponent to US military aid for Ukraine. He travelled to Moscow for Putin’s first interview with a western journalist since Russia’s February 2022 invasion.
His visit to Moscow has been covered heavily by Russian state media, which has long highlighted the US celebrity’s anti-Ukraine talking points.
On X, Tucker thanked Musk for giving him a platform for the interview.
“Elon Musk, to his great credit, has promised not to suppress or block this interview once we post it on his platform X and we are grateful for that.
“Western governments, by contrast will certainly do their best to censor this video on other, less principled platform, because that is what they do,” he said.
