This article analyses the federal dimension of the European Union’s (EU) regulation of online public discourse, which is a dimension of the European integration process not extensively explored. In this article, ‘online public discourse’ refers to the regulation of those forms of speech that are functional to the democratic debate, from the dissemination of news to political communication, and that take place on digital platforms. The Digital Services Act (DSA) and other recent regulations have changed the type of regulation applied by the EU. Does this regulation have a federal nature? To address this research question, the EU regulation of online public discourse is compared with the regulation in the United States. Through a comparative law methodology and a comparison with what has occurred in the United States in the regulation of online public discourse, the article argues that this EU regulation of public discourse exhibits the characteristics of a federal regulatory arrangement.
European Public Law