A US House of Representatives committee report authored by Republican lawmakers has accused the European Commission of pressuring social media platforms to censor political content ahead of elections across Europe, including in Romania, Slovakia and Moldova, allegations the EU executive has dismissed as “pure nonsense”. 

The report, released by the House Judiciary Committee’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, claims that since the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) entered into force in 2023, Brussels has “regularly pressured” online platforms to remove or restrict political speech in ways that disadvantaged conservative and populist candidates.

The committee said it had obtained internal documents from TikTok and other companies under subpoena which it said showed coordinated efforts between EU officials, national regulators and civil society groups to increase takedowns of political content ahead of elections in several countries, including France, Ireland, Moldova, the Netherlands, Romania and Slovakia, as well as the European Parliament elections in June 2024.

The European Commission has strongly rejected the allegations.

"On the latest censorship allegations. Pure nonsense. Completely unfounded," European Commission spokesman Thomas Regnier said as reported by AFP.

The European Commission has not yet replied to a request from bne IntelliNews to comment on the report. 

The Commission has repeatedly said the DSA is designed to tackle illegal content and systemic risks such as disinformation, while safeguarding freedom of expression.

Romania's annulled election 

The report devotes significant attention to Romania, where the Constitutional Court annulled the first round of the presidential election in December 2024, after intelligence services alleged Russia had covertly supported the surprise winner, independent far-right candidate Calin Georgescu, through a TikTok campaign.

US lawmakers say internal TikTok documents undermine that narrative. According to the report, TikTok told both Romanian authorities and the European Commission that it had “not found, nor been presented with, any evidence of a coordinated network of 25,000 accounts associated with Mr. Georgescu’s campaign”, the key claim made by Romania’s intelligence services.

The report adds that by late December 2024, Romanian media, citing the country’s tax authority, found that the alleged TikTok campaign had been financed by another Romanian political party, not Russia. The election result was not reinstated, and a new vote was held in May 2025, won by Nicusur Dan, a candidate backed by mainstream Romanian parties.

The US report says Romanian regulators, operating under powers linked to the DSA, issued sweeping takedown demands to TikTok during the campaign, including requests to remove content critical of the ruling coalition and, at one point, to take down “all materials containing Calin Georgescu images”. 

TikTok, according to the report, warned the Commission it was “wary of the very informal approach” adopted by Romanian election authorities and expressed concern about “unjustified removal of legal content (such as political speech).”

Previously, in February 2025, US Vice President JD Vance  delivered a similar message at the Munich Security Conference, where he accused European leaders of launching an attack on democracy and free speech in Romania.

Dan responded to the committee report in a lengthy Facebook post in which he pointed out that “even the TikTok platform admitted in several public reports that it had proactively identified several hidden influence networks”. 

He said the Constitutional Court of Romania decision was “based on documents that unequivocally indicated the distortion of equal opportunities between candidates and the massive tainting of the electoral campaign by a single candidate … as well as through the undeclared financing of the electoral campaign, including in the online environment.” 

He went on to argue that “The Russian Federation's involvement in the electoral processes in European countries, including in Romania, have also been highlighted by official reports of Nato, the European Union and the Government of Great Britain”. 

He described Russia as being behind an “extensive manipulation campaign aimed at destabilising European democracies, a move that has been going on for many years in the form of a true hybrid war”.

Disinformation risks 

The report also raises concerns about Moldova, an EU candidate country. It says that one month before Moldova’s 2024 presidential election, the Commission’s EU Support Hub hosted a summit with platforms on “addressing disinformation risks through digital services regulation,” with speakers including Moldova’s prime minister.

Republican lawmakers argued that the event, which focused on the DSA, raised questions about conflicts of interest, since the prime minister’s party also fielded a presidential candidate.

Moldovan President Maia Sandu and other senior Moldovan officials have frequently accused Russia of spending millions of euros in an attempt to influence Moldovan elections. 

Speaking at a joint press conference with Polish President Karol Nawrocki on January 26, Sandu alleged that Moscow had spent the equivalent of about 2% of Moldova’s GDP (around €350mn) to influence the 2025 general election.

In Slovakia, the report alleges that the Commission pressured TikTok to treat a range of socially conservative statements as “hate speech” ahead of the 2023 parliamentary election, including claims such as “There are only two genders” and “Children cannot be trans”. 

TikTok’s internal moderation guidance described such views as “common in Slovak political discussions”, the report says, but nonetheless restricted them following engagement with EU and Slovak regulators.

The report says similar guidance was later used for Poland’s 2023 election, where TikTok labelled claims that the government was using COVID-19 lockdowns to suppress voters as a “conspiracy theory” to be controlled.

The allegations come amid growing transatlantic tensions over technology regulation and free speech. US Republicans have increasingly criticised European digital rules, arguing they threaten American constitutional protections and allow foreign governments to shape online discourse beyond their borders. Media platforms including Elon Musk's X have previously been fined under the DSA. 

In an X post, Musk welcomed the committee report, which was issued just days after the European Commission launched an investigation into Grok, an AI chatbot integrated into X, on suspicions it may have breached the DSA, with a statement referring to "antisemitic content, non-consensual deepfakes of women, and child sexual abuse material".