Irish and EU regulators aggressively “censored” social media coverage of Ireland’s 2024 general election and the recent presidential election, a panel of US politicians has claimed in a report.
The report by the staff on the judiciary committee of the Republican-controlled US Congress alleges “harassment” against tech groups to undermine conservative and populist parties.
It claims the European Commission and Irish media regulators in Coimisiún na Meán worked with “biased fact-checkers” and “left-wing” non-governmental organisations before the last two Irish elections.
The document was published on Tuesday, in a week when Minister for Foreign Affairs Helen McEntee is in Washington for political meetings.
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There was no Coimisiún na Meán comment and no comment from An Coimisiún Toghcháin, the Irish electoral regulator.
The European Commission dismissed the claims of censorship as “pure nonsense” and “completely unfounded”, saying freedom of information was a fundamental right in Europe.
“On the alleged silencing of political voices: again, pure nonsense,” said commission spokesman Thomas Regnier.
The US report comes against the backdrop of antagonism between US president Donald Trump and the EU powers over the impact of European regulation on American business.
As such, the report is likely to be seen by Irish and EU officials as part of a backlash in Washington against EU attempts to rein in social media in the areas of data protection and content regulation.
The US panel framed the alleged election interference in Ireland as part of a what it described as European-wide pattern led for a decade by the commission, the EU’s executive branch.
It claimed the commission has worked “to censor true information and political speech” on contentious topics such as the Covid-19 pandemic, mass migration and transgender issues.
“After 10 years, the European Commission has established sufficient control of global online speech to comprehensively suppress narratives that threaten the European Commission’s power,” the report said.
Citing what it said were “non-public documents” in relation to Ireland, Slovakia, the Netherlands, France, Moldova and Romania, the US report went on to claim the commission censored tech platforms ahead of national elections “in order to disadvantage conservative or populist political parties”.
Dublin is the main European hub for tech giants such as Facebook owner Meta, Google, Microsoft, TikTok and X, formerly Twitter.
Noting the primacy of such operations in Ireland, the US panel said the outcome of Irish elections was “particularly important to the European Commission’s tech agenda”.
Coimisiún na Meán was one of the most powerful regulators in the world for the same reason, the panel said, citing laws known as the Digital Services Act (DSA) that regulate online speech.
“Both the commission and the Irish regulator engaged with platforms ahead of Ireland’s 2024 parliamentary elections and 2025 presidential election, and Irish officials have noted how they ‘work closely with the commission in the enforcement of the DSA’,” the report said.
“Two weeks before the 2024 election, Coimisiún na Meán hosted a ‘DSA election roundtable’ alongside commission regulators,” it added.
“Ahead of the meeting, the Irish regulator sent platforms a list of questions they should be prepared to answer, including several about platforms’ DSA risk assessment, co-operation with left-wing NGOs and biased fact-checkers, and platforms’ censorship ‘processes [and] procedures.’”
The US report said Irish regulators followed up and asked Meta additional questions about media literacy initiatives and noted that such initiatives were listed as a best practice under “the not-so-voluntary” DSA election guidelines.
“Each of these interactions created additional censorship pressure on platforms. Platforms, after a decade of the European Commission’s harassment, knew what it wanted – more censorship,” the report said.
“They knew that the European Commission and the Irish media regulator would ask about their censorship measures during these pre-election meetings. And they knew that the European Commission could – and would – retaliate against them if they failed to take adequate censorship measures from the perspective of the commission.”
The US panel noted another DSA election roundtable before the presidential election last October.
“During the meeting, the European Commission warned platforms that the DSA election guidelines required ‘measures to be taken’ ahead of the election, including ‘reinforcing internal processes’ regarding content moderation,” the report said.
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“During the roundtable portion of the event, regulators asked platforms specifically ‘what measures [they had] put in place’.
“Meta responded that it had updated its ‘election risk assessment’ and ‘mitigations’, meaning that it put in place additional censorship steps – though it did not specify exactly what steps those were.
“Google emphasised its use of AI tools to detect misinformation, while Microsoft stated that it removed misinformation that violated its policies and ‘deranked’ (ie, reduce the content’s visibility) it if the content did not violate its policies.”
