ANCOM oversees the Digital Services Act in Romania, the European Union’s social media rulebook that governs how platforms like TikTok and X moderate online speech.
“We’ve never seen something like” what happened in the November 2024 presidential election, Popescu said.
Unsurprisingly, Popescu has drawn the scorn of X owner Elon Musk, who on March 10 posted that “you can tell who the bad guys are by who is demanding censorship,” with a link to a post picturing Popescu. United States Vice President JD Vance also singled out Romania in a February speech in Munich in which he called EU regulators “commissars” for enforcing content moderation policies.
If Musk is going to treat ANCOM “as a threat,” the tech entrepreneur should talk directly with Romanian authorities in the same way he conversed with Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, Popescu said. Musk in January interviewed the AfD’s leader in a livestream on X, just six weeks before Germany’s snap parliamentary election.
The spat between the Romanian regulator and the Tesla, X and SpaceX boss comes even though Musk’s satellite company Starlink is testing controversial new applications in Romania — with ANCOM’s approval.
Musk’s company in October reportedly tested changes in the globally agreed limits on power flux density, 25-year-old standards that ensure space objects don’t interfere with each other. SpaceX and Amazon have argued that these limits are outdated and interfere with innovation.
Musk “owes us more than a debate for what we did for him as a country, for his companies,” Popescu said.
SpaceX, which owns Starlink, did not respond to POLITICO’s request for comment.
