DOJ joins Musk's appeal against the EU's €120 million X fine
Washington has spent a year complaining about European tech enforcement. On Thursday it became a party to a lawsuit over it. Separately, the one European company the AI buildout cannot do without says its home market has stopped buying.
The US Department of Justice filed an application to intervene in Elon Musk's appeal against the €120 million fine the European Commission imposed on X under the Digital Services Act. The filing covers two cases before the EU's General Court in Luxembourg — one brought by X Internet and X Holdings, the other by Musk in his own name — both seeking annulment of the Commission's decision of 5 December 2025, the first penalty ever issued under the DSA. The Commission found X breached the law's transparency rules through its paid blue checkmark, its advertising database and its limits on researchers' access to public data. The State Department helped prepare the filing, which is permitted under Article 40 of the court's statute when a state can show an interest in the result.
The substance of the American objection is narrower than the politics around it, and more interesting. Brett Shumate, the assistant attorney general who runs the DOJ's civil division, said the Commission "inappropriately attempted to expand its regulatory authority to reach American companies not present or operating within its jurisdiction." The specific complaint is about the denominator: Brussels calculated the penalty on the worldwide turnover of businesses Musk controls, rather than on what X earned in Europe, and the DOJ argues the decision "reached Musk as a private person and other companies he owns that have nothing to do with X."
That is a jurisdiction argument a court can actually rule on, and it cuts wider than Musk. If the General Court accepts that the Commission cannot size a DSA fine using the global revenue of a corporate group assembled after the fact, the ceiling on European penalties against US platforms changes for everyone. The General Court has not yet decided whether to admit the US to the case.
The context is an escalation that now has its own history. The Office of the US Trade Representative threatened fees or restrictions on European service companies in December; weeks later the State Department sanctioned five people, including former EU commissioner Thierry Breton. Brussels has not slowed down — it fined Temu €200 million in May, put ChatGPT under the DSA's strictest tier in September, which we covered in EU puts ChatGPT under the Digital Services Act's strictest tier, and is still investigating whether X properly assessed the risks of wiring its chatbot Grok into the platform for EU users. Apple is separately appealing a €500 million fine under the Digital Markets Act.
Worth naming plainly: this is a government joining a private company's lawsuit, and the co-plaintiff is the president's largest donor. That does not make the jurisdictional argument wrong — but it does mean the case will be read politically whatever the court decides, and that the next US administration's leverage over European regulators is now partly hostage to a docket.
ASML says it sold "absolutely nothing" in Europe in 2026 — European chipmakers bought no lithography equipment from the continent's largest company all year. Europe accounted for 0% of ASML's revenue in the first two quarters of 2026, down from 1% in 2025, 5% in 2024 and 4% in 2023. "We are selling absolutely nothing in Europe," said Frank Heemskerk, the company's executive vice president of public affairs. "Because Europe is not investing and because no chip factories are being built in Europe. That is genuinely worrying."
His proposed fix is unusual coming from a supplier. Brussels has spent years subsidising fab construction; Heemskerk told an audience in Amsterdam that subsidies are the wrong lever and that the EU should instead aggregate and guarantee demand for European-made chips, and said ASML is making the case directly to Ursula von der Leyen. The catch is that none of Europe's current fab projects — Intel's Ireland expansion, the €15 billion TSMC-backed ESMC plant near Dresden, Infineon's €5 billion Dresden fab, GlobalFoundries' Fab 1 upgrade — are leading-edge facilities that use EUV scanners at all. ASML's Q2 told the same story from the other side: net sales of €9.3 billion, with South Korea at 43% of shipments, Taiwan 30%, China 14% and the US 9%. We wrote about the machines Europe isn't buying in September — TSMC and Samsung commit to ASML's $400 million High NA EUV machines — and this is the same market seen from the demand end.
What to watch: whether the General Court admits the US to the X case, and whether Brussels responds to ASML's demand-side pitch with anything more concrete than another round of fab subsidies.
The US just became a party to a European enforcement case. Does that change how Brussels writes its next DSA penalty, or does it only change the appeal? Tell us in the comments.
Sources: Ars Technica — Trump administration takes Musk's side in fight over EU tech rules · US Department of Justice — United States files request to intervene in case brought by X Corp and Elon Musk seeking annulment · TNW — US asks EU court to let it back Musk's challenge to €120M X fine · European Commission — Commission fines X €120 million under the Digital Services Act · Tom's Hardware — ASML says it sold 'absolutely nothing' in Europe in 2026 · ASML — Q2 2026 financial results · Investing.com — ASML Q2 2026 slides: outlook raised on AI demand
