State Department Criticizes European Allies for Suppressing Speech, Free Elections

Published: 5/28/2025, 1:57:58 PM EDT

State Department Criticizes European Allies for Suppressing Speech, Free Elections — The seal of the U.S. State Department at the State Department in Washington on May 11, 2018. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

The State Department called out European nations for failing to uphold the values of Western civilization.

In a post on the State Department's Substack blog, senior adviser for the Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL) Samuel Samson condemned European nations and the European Union government for restricting free speech and the electoral rights of dissident parties and candidates. Samson said that renewing a commitment to the shared values of Western nations is not just a diplomatic issue, but a security issue.

"The close relationship between the United States and Europe transcends geographic proximity and transactional politics," Samson's post, titled "The Need for Civilizational Allies in Europe," began.

"Our transatlantic partnership is underpinned by a rich Western tradition of natural law, virtue ethics, and national sovereignty. This tradition flows from Athens and Rome, through medieval Christianity, to English common law, and ultimately into America's founding documents.

"America remains indebted to Europe for this intellectual and cultural legacy. This connection between Europe and the United States is also the reason we speak honestly when we disagree or have concerns—and is why the Trump Administration is sounding the alarm in Europe."

Samson pointed to the arrests of Adam Smith-Connor and Livia Tossici-Bolt, two citizens of the United Kingdom who were arrested for violating the UK's "buffer zones," which prohibit any protests outside of abortion clinics. Smith-Connor was convicted in October 2024 for praying outside a clinic in Bournemouth, Dorset, in November 2022, in violation of a local Public Spaces Protection Order. Tossici-Bolt was convicted in April for reportedly holding a sign saying "here to talk, if you want" at the same clinic in March 2023. Samson met with Tossici-Bolt in March, according to a post from the DRL on social media platform X.

Samson pointed to Germany's amended Network Enforcement Act and the European Union's Digital Services Act, both of which are explicitly intended to combat hate speech and disinformation; and specifically the European Commission's enforcement actions against Elon Musk's X, as examples of online speech regulation being used to "silence dissident voices through Orwellian content moderation."

Furthermore, he pointed to Germany labeling the populist Alternative for Germany party as an extremist organization—which has since been put on hold; the conviction of French Presidential candidate Marine le Pen on embezzlement charges and her subsequent ban from standing for political office; Poland denying the Law and Justice party millions' worth of public subsidies after rejecting its 2023 financial statement; and the disqualification of Romanian presidential candidate Calin Georgescu as examples of restrictions on voting rights.

"Our concerns are not partisan but principled," Samson wrote. "The suppression of speech, facilitation of mass migration, targeting of religious expression, and undermining of electoral choice threatens the very foundation of the transatlantic partnership. A Europe that replaces its spiritual and cultural roots, that treats traditional values as dangerous relics, and that centralizes power in unaccountable institutions is a Europe less capable of standing firm against external threats and internal decay. To this end, achieving peace in Europe and around the world requires not a rejection of our shared cultural heritage, but a renewal of it."