As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary, transatlantic relations are fraying. America’s First Principles increasingly collide with a European Union bent on centralizing power by regulating speech—even by Americans—pressuring U.S. companies, and controlling political discourse by bureaucratic decree.
America was founded on First Principles. The Constitution protects freedom of speech, divides power among competing branches, and grounds political authority in the consent of the governed. The Founders rejected efficiency as the organizing logic of government. They designed a system meant to frustrate the accumulation of power. Liberty, they understood, requires limits, tension, and accountability.
The European Union represents the opposite approach.
Over time, the EU has evolved into a centralized bureaucratic regime that steadily transfers authority away from sovereign nations and into the hands of distant, unelected institutions. National constitutions are subordinated to supranational rules. Democratic choice is constrained by regulatory harmonization. Power flows upward to Brussels, while accountability fades.
This constitutional divide explains why transatlantic tensions are growing in areas once assumed to reflect shared values—most clearly in freedom of speech.
The EU’s Digital Services Act makes the problem unmistakable. Marketed as a tool to combat “disinformation” and manage vaguely defined “systemic risks,” the DSA pressures platforms to suppress lawful speech at scale. Congressional investigations have raised serious concerns that EU officials have gone further—pressuring companies to rewrite global content‑moderation rules, including those governing speech by Americans.
This is not abstract. When American platforms comply with Brussels, American speech is indirectly regulated by foreign bureaucrats. The First Amendment may still restrain Washington, but it offers little protection when Europe dictates the rules of the global digital square.
The enforcement regime compounds the threat.
Under the DSA, the European Commission can act simultaneously as rule maker, investigator, and enforcer—imposing massive fines on companies deemed non-compliant. European leaders are now arguing for tighter control of online speech during elections, thereby empowering regulators to define acceptable political discourse. That concentration of authority would be unthinkable under the American constitutional system, which divides power precisely to prevent such abuse.
Speech is only one front in a broader assault on national self‑government.
The EU’s use of Article 7 proceedings against countries such as Poland and Hungary shows how far this project has advanced. What was once described as a safeguard against democratic collapse has become a political weapon—used to discipline elected governments that resist Brussels’ ideological and institutional demands.
The courts reinforce the same dynamic.
The European Court of Justice routinely overrides national legislation, particularly in data privacy and digital regulation. GDPR rulings impose one‑size‑fits‑all standards across vastly different societies, stripping nations of the ability to balance privacy, innovation, and economic growth according to their own priorities.
Economic regulation follows the same centralized logic.
Through the Digital Markets Act and aggressive competition enforcement, Brussels increasingly dictates the business models of major firms—many of them American—under threat of massive penalties. These measures are framed as consumer protection, but in practice they amount to bureaucratic control of markets once governed by law, competition, and national policy.
Taken together, the EU increasingly resembles a system that distrusts voters, sidelines national parliaments, and concentrates power in institutions no one can meaningfully vote out of office.
The Brexit experience underscores the point. Britain’s decision to leave the EU was not isolationism, but a rejection of rule by a distant, unaccountable bureaucracy. Whatever the costs of departure, Brexit demonstrated a crucial truth: democratic self‑government is possible—and nations need not accept permanent subordination to Brussels to remain prosperous, secure, and allied.
The American constitutional order rejects the EU model outright. Power is fragmented. Congress legislates. The executive enforces. Courts interpret. Elections impose accountability. From a bureaucrat’s perspective, this system is inefficient. From a citizen’s perspective, it is the foundation of liberty.
As America approaches its semiquincentennial, this divergence demands a response.
First, Congress must make clear—through oversight and legislation—that foreign regulatory regimes cannot be used to circumvent the First Amendment by proxy. U.S. agencies should resist cooperation arrangements that expose American speech to EU censorship mechanisms.
Second, trade and technology talks with Europe must treat free speech as a constitutional red line, not a negotiable cultural difference. Regulatory “alignment” that undermines American liberties is not alignment at all.
The Founders understood that liberty does not sustain itself. It must be defended—especially against centralized power.
If transatlantic relations are to recover in America’s third century, they must be rebuilt on respect for national sovereignty, not submission to supranational bureaucracy. As Brexit showed, Europe’s nations are ultimately stronger, freer, and more legitimate governing themselves rather than remaining trapped in an increasingly anti‑democratic EU straitjacket.
America’s allies must grasp a simple truth: our First Principles are not policy preferences but the foundation of our constitutional order—and any partnership that ignores them will continue to fray.
Paul McCarthy is Senior Research Fellow for European Affairs in the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at The Heritage Foundation.
