BRUSSELS — The European Commission on Friday imposed a €120 million fine on Elon Musk’s X, the first-ever penalty issued under the bloc’s flagship content moderation law.  

The move is likely to inflame tensions with the U.S. over the bloc’s digital rules and prompted early criticism from U.S. Vice President JD Vance, who blasted the plans as a fine for “not engaging in censorship.”

While the fine’s size is moderate compared to earlier tech penalties issued by Brussels, the U.S. has repeatedly pushed the EU to water down its tech rule books in trade talks.  

X was found in breach of transparency obligations it faces as a very large online platform under the EU’s Digital Services Act. The Commission said the design of X’s blue checkmark is “deceptive,” after it was changed from user verification into a paid feature. 

The EU’s executive also said X’s advertising library lacks transparency and that it fails to provide access to public data for researchers as required by the law. 

The fine marks the conclusion of only one part of the EU’s probe into X, which opened almost two years ago as the first one under the DSA. Other major parts, such as on X’s efforts to counter the spread of illegal content and battle information manipulation, are still ongoing.  

The European Commission’s Executive Vice President for Tech Sovereignty Henna Virkkunen contrasted the EU’s decision on X with a separate decision on TikTok also released Friday. The investigation into TikTok’s ad library was closed with no fine because the company offered to change the design of its service.

“We’re not here to impose the highest fines, we’re here to make sure that our digital legislation is enforced. If you comply with our rules, you don’t get a fine,” Virkkunen told reporters at a briefing Friday morning. 

Under the DSA, companies can be fined up to 6 percent of global annual turnover. While X’s global revenues are estimated to be in the low single-digit billions, Musk’s range of companies has revenues that are much higher. 

Virkkunen said that they estimated the size of the fine to be “proportionate” and said it was calculated considering “the nature of these infringements, their gravity in terms of affected EU users, and their duration.”

Asked to clarify how the EU calculated the amount, a senior Commission official repeated the idea of proportionality and said that it cannot be “drilled down to a simple economic formula.” 

Brussels has been under growing pressure from EU leaders, European Parliament lawmakers and digital rights groups to wrap up the investigation into X to show that it’s protecting its citizens online. 

U.S. officials have repeatedly attacked the DSA as amounting to censorship and threatened to retaliate with trade tariffs. On Thursday night, Vance said again that the EU should not be attacking American companies. 

“Rumors swirling that the EU commission will fine X hundreds of millions of dollars for not engaging in censorship. The EU should be supporting free speech not attacking American companies over garbage,” Vance wrote on X. “Much appreciated,” Musk said in response.

When asked about Vance’s remarks, Virkkunen told reporters: “The DSA is having not to do with censorship, this decision is about the transparency of X.” 

X did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

TikTok spokesperson Paolo Ganino told POLITICO: “We take our obligations under EU law seriously and reiterate our call for a level playing field. We expect these DSA standards to be applied equally and consistently across all platforms.”