Elon Musk plans livestream with Alice Weidel: EU Commission under great pressure

USA/Germany - With his open interference in the German election campaign, multi-billionaire Elon Musk (53) is putting a lot of pressure on politicians. Now the Tesla boss is even planning a livestream with AfD leader Alice Weidel (45).

Elon Musk (53) and Alice Weidel (45) will meet on January 9 for a conversation that can be followed live on X.
Elon Musk (53) and Alice Weidel (45) will meet on January 9 for a conversation that can be followed live on X.  © Alex Brandon/AP/dpa, Bernd von Jutrczenka/dpa

On Thursday at 7 pm, Weidel and Musk will meet in a livestream on the X platform. The conversation will take place in a so-called X-Space, a format for live conversations.

Meanwhile, the pressure on the EU Commission continues to grow. According to some EU parliamentarians, who are increasingly concerned about Elon Musk's blatant forays into European politics, the Brussels executive is simply too slow.

Damian Boeselager, 36, MEP and co-founder of the pan-European Volt party, has written to the Commission calling for it to investigate Musk's interference in European elections.

Speaking to the Guardian, he said the X algorithm had been reconfigured to specifically promote Musk's tweets. However, he said this was incompatible with the EU's Digital Services Act (DSA), which aims to prevent harmful online activity and the spread of disinformation.

"I don't understand why people believe that freedom of expression is not affected by the concentration of opinion power in the hands of a few. For me, this has illiberal, autocratic tendencies when one voice is so much more powerful than all the others," says Boeselager.

EU Commission wants to "carefully analyze" conversation between Elon Musk and Alice Weidel

Jean-Noël Barrot (41) and other European politicians have called on the EU Commission to finally take more decisive action.
Jean-Noël Barrot (41) and other European politicians have called on the EU Commission to finally take more decisive action.  © Marwan Naamani/dpa

France's Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot (41) is also increasing the pressure on the Commission to apply EU law more resolutely. "Either the European Commission applies the laws that exist to protect our unique space with the utmost clarity or it does not," he told the Guardian.

Arba Kokalari (38), a Swedish lawmaker who was involved in drafting the DSA, said the commission was "very slow or too slow" in investigating social media platforms, including X.

Christel Schaldemose, 57, a Socialist vice-president of the European Parliament, said the Commission needed to "step up" enforcement of the DSA and "do things faster" and "more proactively" to ensure platforms were doing enough to protect themselves against a "systemic risk to democracy".

Companies that violate the DSA can be fined up to 6 percent of their global turnover or banned from doing business in the EU.

In response to the increasing pressure, the EU Commission has since announced that it will "carefully analyze" the conversation between Weidel and Musk.