Elon Musk's X Launches Legal Action Against USD141.5B EU Fine

(MENAFN) Elon Musk's social media platform X has launched a legal challenge against a €120 million ($141.5 million) penalty imposed by the European Union over alleged violations of its Digital Services Act (DSA), escalating a bitter dispute between the billionaire and Brussels over free speech and regulatory overreach.

Three separate appeals were submitted to the EU's Court of Justice this week — two filed by X and its artificial intelligence subsidiary, and a third lodged personally by Musk — targeting the landmark fine that the European Commission handed down in December, the first non-compliance penalty issued under the DSA.

Brussels accused X of failing to meet the regulation's transparency standards and condemned its practice of awarding blue verification checkmarks to paid subscribers as a "deceptive" mechanism designed to mislead users.

X pushed back forcefully. Its Global Government Affairs team issued a statement Friday, saying: "This EU Decision resulted from an incomplete and superficial investigation, grave procedural errors, a tortured interpretation of the obligations under the DSA, and systematic breaches of rights of defence and basic due process requirements suggesting prosecutorial bias."

Musk has long alleged that EU authorities sought to weaponize the DSA against his platform. In 2024, he claimed regulators offered him what he described as an "illegal secret deal," asserting he was told that "if we quietly censored speech without telling anyone, they would not fine us."

When the penalty was announced in December, Musk publicly called for the dissolution of the EU. The response from Washington was swift — the US State Department sanctioned five EU officials, among them former Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton, who had previously threatened Musk with legal consequences over his 2024 broadcast of an interview with then-presidential candidate Donald Trump. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio branded Breton and his associates as "activists," who "coerce American platforms to censor, demonetize, and suppress American viewpoints."

Adding further fuel to the controversy, documents recently released by the US House Judiciary Committee alleged that the EU leveraged the threat of DSA enforcement to pressure multiple social media companies into suppressing politically sensitive material, including content described as "anti-migrant" posts and "populist rhetoric."

X's legal troubles across Europe extend well beyond the DSA fine. The platform is currently subject to dozens of ongoing investigations spanning the EU, the UK, France, Ireland, and Spain — including coordinated probes into sexually explicit content generated through its Grok AI tool.

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