On 3 September 2025, a group of over 30 academics, including CREATe’s Martin Kretschmer and Lilian Edwards, sent an open letter to Rep. Jim Jordan and Commissioner Henna Virkkunen. The letter was in response to the US House Judiciary Committee hearing on ‘Europe’s Threat to American Speech and Innovation’, which took place on the same day. As Martin Husovec highlighted:
“Ahead of today’s US House of Representatives hearing on the “Europe’s Threat to American Speech and Innovation”, more than 30 academics researching the EU Digital Services Act (DSA) and civil liberties sent an open letter to Rep. Jim Jordan and Commissioner Henna Virkkunen. We write to correct persistent misconceptions that the DSA is a tool for censorship, particularly those included in the recent House of Representatives staff’s report on the DSA. We set the record straight with respect to DSA’s risk management framework, lawful content regulation, trusted flaggers, out-of-court dispute settlement bodies, codes of practice, speech disparities between the US/EU, and the question of extraterritoriality. The two letters explain why the DSA is a balanced piece of legislation that is rightly intended to empower users. The law was adopted with the purpose of advancing the expression rights of users by giving them procedural rights and more control regarding the moderation of their content by online platforms. The letters also identify some opportunities for clarification of the DSA to prevent further confusion in other jurisdictions.”
Therefore, the open letter aims to address the persistent and misleading claims about the EU DSA, particularly those raised in the US House Judiciary Committee’s interim staff report on the DSA. It is important to note that the hearing focused on discussing what have been called the ‘European censorship laws’, particularly the UK Online Safety Act and the EU DSA. However, they also looked at the UK Digital Markets Competition and Consumers Act (DMCC) and the EU Digital Markets Act (DMA), which they have claimed target American companies and hurt innovation.
The Financial Times has drawn attention to this debate by reporting on how Big Tech and its political allies have been actively shaping the narrative around the DSA in the United States, often distorting its purpose and effects. Although the motor force behind the ‘free speech’ campaign is the large US big tech firms, they say, rightwingers are also using the issue for political purposes.
At CREATe, we see this intervention as part of a wider debate that aligns with our research into digital platform regulation. Previous work includes the opinion of the European Copyright Society on the relationship between copyright and the Digital Services Act Proposal as well as our working paper on the Digital Regulation Cooperation Forum (DRCF). The latter draws on interviews and published material to examine the role of the DRCF as a new form of cross-regulatory cooperation in the UK, offering insights into its achievements and the challenges it faces in the fast-changing digital environment.
You can access and read the open letters through the links below:
Open letter to Rep. Jim Jordan: https://husovec.eu/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/US-Academic-Letter-DSA-Censorship.pdf
Open letter to Commissioner Henna Virkkunen: https://husovec.eu/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/EU-Academic-Letter-DSA-Censorship.pdf