## Colophon tags:: [[&article]] [[%tie]] [[states]] [[%t]] url:: https://www.ft.com/content/c4a067dc-dfac-487b-906f-c9bbb73016e8 date:: [[2026-05-17]] %% title:: Europe’s leaders must stop self-censoring type:: [[clipped-note]] file:: published:: 2026-05-17T04:00:03.579Z author:: [[@Marietje Schaake]] [Click to Archive](https://web.archive.org/save/https://www.ft.com/content/c4a067dc-dfac-487b-906f-c9bbb73016e8) %% archive:: ## Notes short:: - ## Full text ## Europe’s leaders must stop self-censoring - 20260517 - fulltext --- publish: false creator: Prateek Waghre --- ## Full Text %% White House pressure is being met with political flattery and strategic ambiguity that citizens find confusing  - [Marietje Schaake](https://www.ft.com/marietje-schaake)  © Ben Hickey Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for free Your guide to what Trump’s second term means for Washington, business and the world <iframe src="https://www.ft.com/register/in-article-sign-up?ft-content-uuid=c4a067dc-dfac-487b-906f-c9bbb73016e8&amp;newsletter-id=65b8fec772badb00166eafc6&amp;trackingRootId=cmp9nmzpe00013t6mq7ouj1vg" height="77px"></iframe> *The writer is a fellow at Stanford University’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. She is author of ‘The Tech Coup’* Accusations of censorship by members of the Trump administration towards the EU are a familiar mantra by now. Late last year, secretary of state Marco Rubio denounced what he called the “global censorship-industrial complex” that he claimed was forcing US tech companies to suppress viewpoints. America’s retaliation is an attack on the EU’s right to regulate tech companies. As part of this, Rubio decided to issue travel sanctions on four civil society leaders and one former European Commissioner. Thierry Breton, who oversaw the EU’s internal market from 2019 until 2024, is no longer permitted to enter the US. In a similar move, the US national security strategy (NSS) made the preposterous claim last year that the EU was “creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition” and declared the EU a threat to stability that needs to be resisted. But while Washington denounces Europeans for censorship of tech companies, the US is engaging in some heavy-handed censorship of its own. The American Library Association recorded challenges to over 4,200 book titles in 2025 alone. One Texas university wants to ban the teaching of Plato on the grounds that it teaches gender and race ideology. A school is reported to have removed the graphic adaptation of *Anne Frank’s Diary*, claiming the teenager’s exploration of her sexuality was inappropriate. And in July last year, President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14319 Preventing Woke AI in the Federal Government, in effect disqualifying AI models sold by companies supporting diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) from government contracts. When I served in the European parliament, I worked on countless resolutions dealing with human rights violations around the world. Had measures like the ones recently taken by the US been adopted by any other government, political condemnations and proposed EU countermeasures would have followed without hesitation. Not now. Instead, European political leaders have responded to escalating American pressure with flattery and strategic ambiguity. They present the president with lavish invitations and concoct outcomes that the White House can claim as winning a deal. There is a certain logic to this. When German Chancellor Friedrich Merz described the humiliation of the US following the Iran attacks, Trump’s response was to withdraw 5,000 American troops from Germany. The lesson was not lost on Merz’s counterparts. Europe’s leaders are focused on preventing escalation or retaliation. They seem to be trying to buy time to build up more defence capabilities, more tech options and alternative trade flows. Yet calculated silence speaks louder than words. The self-censorship is political. European leaders are, as a recent Carnegie Endowment analysis put it, “quiet quitting” the US: gradually decoupling in practice while avoiding taking a clear public stance. But although the rerouting of contracts and investments into sovereign solutions will have an impact in the long run, the danger of quiet quitting is in ceding the narrative in the meantime. If European leaders won’t defend their own interests and values they leave citizens without a guiding framework for understanding what is at stake and how to respond. They also become more vulnerable to Maga-inspired “Make Europe Great Again” movements. Overall, polls consistently show that Europeans deeply mistrust the US. Politicians in Europe should weigh up worries about White House retaliation to justified pushback against the impact that their lack of courage and outspokenness could have at home. The Trump administration’s anticensorship campaign against Europe is a powerplay with a free speech facade. It is geopolitics defended by First Amendment rhetoric. European leaders do not need to match Washington’s aggression in order to make their own positions clear, and I sincerely hope they don’t. But they do need to be honest with their own publics about what is happening: a former partner is attempting to dictate the terms of governance in Europe. A whole-of-society approach is needed to ensure that Europeans defend and advance their own values and interests in the face of these attacks. Free speech has never mattered more. It cannot be left to those who wield it as a weapon. Europe’s real censorship problem is the self-silencing among its leaders. %% ## Colophon title:: Europe’s leaders must stop self-censoring type:: [[full-text]] url:: https://www.ft.com/content/c4a067dc-dfac-487b-906f-c9bbb73016e8 date:: [[2026-05-17]] published:: 2026-05-17T04:00:03.579Z