Hungary has become the latest flashpoint in the standoff escalating between Elon Musk’s X and Europe after a Berlin court ordered the social media platform to hand over data related to the upcoming election in Hungary to researchers.
The Berlin-based NGOs Democracy Reporting International (DRI) and Society for Civil Rights (GFF), along with the law firm Hausfeld Rechtsanwälte, sued X in early February after the platform refused their data request back in November 2025. The stated goal of the NGOs was to access data to research influence campaigns and disinformation in the upcoming April parliamentary election in Hungary.
DRI had already sued X back in February 2025 for similar reasons linked to the early election in Germany.
Judges framed the latest decision as a milestone enforcement of the EU Digital Services Act (DSA), which obliges large platforms to provide data access so researchers can monitor risks such as ‘disinformation, hate speech, and election manipulation’.
Paving the Way for Election Interference
Relations between the European Union and X—and other American tech giants—soured after the European Commission fined Musk’s platform €120 million for breaching transparency and design rules under the DSA, in particular for misleading ‘blue-check’ verification, opaque ad-transparency practices, and restricting researcher access back in December 2025.
Elon Musk described the fine as ‘bullsh*t’, stating that it was an attack on free speech and American tech. This sentiment was echoed by US Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio as well, resulting in one of the biggest clashes between the Trump administration and the EU since January 2025.
Meanwhile, the US House Judiciary Committee published a report in February 2026 exposing the European Commission for interfering in at least eight European elections by putting pressure on social media platforms to censor mostly right-wing talking points on immigration, ‘anti-EU rhetoric’, and gender issues.
The report identified eight elections in which the Commission interfered, including the Dutch elections of 2023 and 2025, the 2024 European Parliament elections, the 2024 French legislative elections, and the 2024 Belgian regional elections. It further cited the 2024 German state elections in Thuringia and Saxony, the 2023 Polish parliamentary elections, and the Spanish general elections of the same year. In all these instances, the European Commission held high-pressure, pre-election meetings with social media giants to demand the suppression of specific, predominantly conservative, political narratives—and it seems they are trying to do the same with the 2026 Hungarian election as well.
Stakes Go Far Beyond Hungary
It is also telling who finances the NGO that sued X in connection with the April parliamentary vote. As pointed out by Democracy Interference Observatory, DRI is funded by the EU, the German federal government, and the Dutch government. The lawsuit was also backed by an Open Society-funded NGO, GFF. ‘This is foreign- and EU-funded strategic litigation aimed at Hungary,’ the think tank said in a recent post on X.
Hungary is preparing for a highly contested election in April, the result of which would go well beyond the country. At the beginning of this week, Marco Rubio visited Budapest to meet with Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. During a joint press conference, Rubio said that Orbán is ‘essential’ to American interests in the region and that Trump is ‘deeply committed’ to his success.
Meanwhile, Brussels backs his opposition, Fidesz defector Péter Magyar, whom they see as someone who could lift Hungary’s long-held veto over Ukraine’s EU accession. Orbán has accused both the European Commission and Kyiv of openly interfering in Hungary’s election.
According to a recently published survey by the Center for Fundamental Rights, Orbán’s Fidesz–KDNP party alliance would win the vote if it were held this Sunday, by 49–42.
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