During his recent visit at the Munich Security Conference in Germany, US Vice President JD Vance claimed European freedom of speech was in decline. DW’s Team Fact check takes a closer look at some of his examples and provides context surrounding these cases.
Claim: The Scottish government has allegedly warned citizens that praying at home could be illegal. “The Scottish government began distributing letters to citizens whose houses lay within so-called Safe Access Zones, warning them that even private prayer within their own homes may amount to breaking the law,” Vance said. “Naturally, the government urged readers to report any fellow citizens suspected guilty of thought crime.”
DW Fact check: Misleading.
While it is true that Scotland introduced so-called Safe Access Zones within 200 meters (about 650 feet) of abortion clinics in September 2024 and banned “silent prayer” and similar pressure-building activities to keep women from going through with abortions, silent prayer at home with no distress to others is not included in the ban.
However, the law does stipulate that even activities that can be seen or heard within the zone and are “done intentionally or recklessly” in a private place within the area (like a house) between the protected premises and the boundary of a zone could be an offense.
It’s a common tactic by US anti-abortion activists, so-called “pro-lifers,” to gather in front of abortion clinics, handing out fliers, showing photos of fetuses or using the cover of prayer to intimidate women entering the clinics to pressure them into keeping the baby.
“This is shocking and shameless misinformation from Vice President JD Vance,” saidGillian Mackay, Member of the Scottish Parliament on X, who had introduced the Safe Access Zones bill.
She said that while the letter encouraged people to report anything they thought violated the law, the police would give the same encouragement for every other law in the country.
“The letter was sent to households to inform them of what the zones mean for them. As we discussed in the passage of the Act, no individual behavior is criminalized. Silent prayer or praying in your own home are not illegal as stated by the VP,” she wrote on X. “This is simply scaremongering.”
Claim: A British man was charged for silently praying in front of an abortion clinic on behalf of an unborn son he and his former girlfriend had aborted, Vance said. “A little over two years ago, the British government charged Adam Smith-Connor, a 51-year-old physiotherapist and an army veteran, with the heinous crime of standing 50 meters from an abortion clinic and silently praying for three minutes.” He was found guilty of breaking the “government’s new buffer zones law” and was sentenced to pay “thousands of pounds in legal costs to the prosecution.”
DW Fact check: Misleading.
Adam Smith-Connor was convicted of breaching a safe zone by praying outside an abortion clinic in Bournemouth in November 2022, after refusing repeated requests to leave the area. He was handed a 100-pound fine which he didn’t pay, triggering a court case. Ultimately, he was given a two-year conditional discharge and ordered to pay prosecution costs to the tune of 9,000 pounds ($11,300, €10,800).
The Public Spaces Protection Order was introduced outside the Bournemouth clinic in October 2022 to create buffer zones around abortion clinics to stop women from being harassed or having to pass by vigils.
The son Smith-Connor said he was praying for was aborted over 20 years ago.
Smith-Connor is receiving legal support from an American conservative Christian legal advocacy group that has been labeled a “hate group.” He has appealed the decision.
Claim: “I look to Brussels, where EU commissars warn citizens that they intend to shut down social media during times of civil unrest the moment they spot what they’ve judged to be, quote, ‘hateful content,'” Vance said in Munich.
DW Fact check: Misleading.
After quick research around JD Vance’s claim on EU commissars warning about shutting down social media during times of civil unrest, we found different media reports referring to the topic back in July 2023. They cited former European Commissioner for Internal Market, Thierry Breton, referring to the possibility of a shutdown under EU’s content moderation law only “in extreme cases” and following due process if they didn’t crack down problematic content during riots. In his statements, Breton cites and refers to the Digital Services Act (DSA), adopted in 2022 and fully applicable since 2024.
Breton’s comments were a response to French President Emmanuel Macron raising the possibility of blocking social media platforms during civil unrest in the country after the police killing of 17-year-old Nahel Mezouk in a Paris suburb. Article 19, a British human rights organization, and other organizations raised concerns over Breton’s comments.
But does the DSA actually allow EU Member States to shut down social media during times of unrest like JD Vance claims?
The DSA regulates online intermediaries and platforms, such as social networks, content-sharing platforms and app stores and addresses issues like illegal content, transparent advertising and disinformation. According to the European Commission, the main goal of the act is “to prevent illegal and harmful activities online and the spread of disinformation.”
In its fourth chapter, under Article 51, the DSA establishes the powers of the Digital Services Coordinator, the authority designated by an EU Member State to supervise providers of intermediary services and enforce their regulation.
The act states in Article 51, Section 3b that if Digital Services Coordinators consider that an infringement that is causing serious harm and entails a criminal offense involving a threat to the life or safety of persons has not been remedied, they can request a competent judicial authority to order the temporary restriction of access of recipients to the service concerned by the infringement. If this is not technically feasible, the provider’s online interface on which the infringement takes place can be restricted.
This measure, however, is the last of a series of mechanisms against platforms that don’t comply with the EU legal framework. That means that for this figure to be able to restrict the use of a social media platform, all other measures outlined in the DSA must have been exhausted, including allowing the management of the platform to adopt a plan of action to terminate the infringement (Section 3a of Article 51).
And how does this affect social media platforms? The DSA dictates specific obligations to what it considers “very large online platforms,” meaning platforms and search engines reaching 45 million or more consumers in Europe. The list of these online platforms include services by providers like Google, Meta, TikTok, Twitter International Unlimited Company (X.com), among others.
In that regard, the claim that the EU commissars can shut down social media if they spot what they’ve judged to be “hateful content” is misleading.
Edited by: Rachel Baig
