Earlier this month, the European Union signaled it was prepared to fine Elon Musk's social media platform X (formerly Twitter) roughly $140 million for policies that, in the United States, sit squarely within First Amendment protections.
Whatever one thinks of Mr. Musk or his platform, the episode revealed something larger.
Brussels is increasingly comfortable asserting its authority even when doing so collides directly with American legal norms.
That confidence is not limited to social media regulation.
It's now showing up in far more consequential places, most notably in Romania, where an EU member state is openly defying U.S. federal court orders and daring Washington to respond.
Romania, a NATO ally which hosts U.S. missile defense assets and regularly emphasizes its commitment to Western values, has refused to pay a $356 million international arbitration award owed to two Swedish investors.
The award was issued years ago under a bilateral investment treaty and later confirmed repeatedly by U.S. courts.
Under ordinary circumstances, the matter would be settled.
Instead, Bucharest insists its hands are tied.
The European Commission has declared that paying the award would violate EU "state aid" rules. Romania has embraced that position, effectively arguing that EU bureaucracy outranks binding treaties and final American judgments.
That should give Washington pause.
The case itself is not complicated.
Romania offered tax incentives to attract investment, withdrew them prematurely after joining the EU, and lost in arbitration before the World Bank affiliated International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes.
The investors followed the rules. Romania lost. U.S. courts enforced the result.
What Romania is now testing is not the law but America's willingness to stand behind it.
This is where the parallel with the EU’s posture toward X becomes clear. In both cases, Brussels is asserting a form of supranational authority that reaches beyond Europe's borders and treats American legal protections, whether constitutional rights or treaty enforcement, as secondary to EU regulatory preferences.
If that approach prevails, the implications extend well beyond any single company or country. International arbitration exists because investors need confidence that governments cannot rewrite the rules after the fact.
If EU institutions can retroactively invalidate awards through competition policy, then treaties become conditional promises.
That uncertainty will not deter only European investment. It will hit American companies hardest.
Other EU member states faced with similar arbitration rulings have ultimately paid.
Romania's refusal suggests it believes Washington will look the other way, reluctant to press an ally or challenge Brussels.
That would be a mistake.
The United States doesn't need a public confrontation with Europe.
But it does need to be clear that alliance politics do not excuse ignoring U.S. court orders.
Romania's bid to join the OECD, a club built on predictability and rule of law standards, should not proceed while it openly disregards final judgments.
Nor should this issue be treated as a technical trade dispute rather than a test of credibility.
The same principle applies to speech.
Europe is free to regulate its own market.
It's not free to export its regulatory preferences in ways that nullify American constitutional protections or undermine the legal systems the U.S. relies on to protect its interests abroad.
For decades, the transatlantic relationship rested on shared assumptions about law, contracts, and mutual respect for domestic legal orders.
Those assumptions are now being strained, not by adversaries but by allies.
When Brussels pushes and Washington shrugs, the message is heard far beyond Europe. And it is not a reassuring one.
Mitchell Brown is an Army veteran, with extensive experience as a linguist, intelligence collector, and reconnaissance asset. Mr. Brown eventually took a legislative role in the U.S. House, during which he began his work on policy for the chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security. Mitchell was subsequently appointed to serve as deputy White House Liaison for the Department of Labor for the Trump administration. He was also tasked with leading in lowering the unemployment rate during COVID-19. Read Mitch Brown's Insider Reports — Click Here Now.