Cypriot member of the European parliament Fidias Panayiotou on Thursday denied being “Elon Musk’s puppet”.

He posted a video on X entitled “Am I Elon Musk’s puppet?”, in which he made his case that he is not.

“I don’t feel that I’m Elon Musk’s man in the [European] parliament but maybe parliament feels another way, because, you know, when you are an independent thinker, I like to be defined as a person that Elon Musk likes, but we didn’t chat in person or via text,” he said.

He added that when he posts content relating to his work in the European parliament on social media, Musk “comments and retweets and says good things”.

“Also, as he said that Fidias should be the president of Europe, which is funny,” he said.

Asked by an interviewer whether Musk’s continued commentary on European politics constitutes a danger to democracy, he denied this.

“I don’t think it’s a danger to democracy honestly that Elon Musk supports me. I think this is a beauty of democracy. You don’t want a person to be … you don’t want a person that supports someone to be able to express freely that he likes my ideas, for example?”

He added, “I think this is what true democracy is, even if he has money, then we should not allow him to speak?

“Everyone is free to talk about European politics, like, we should censor them? They don’t need to have an opinion?”

Questioned over fears that Musk may begin to censor X users who disagree with his political stance, he said that should this happen, people will “leave the platform” for alternatives such as TikTok, Facebook or Instagram.

“But it seems that X is having record numbers, so it seems that he is doing a good job,” he said.

News website Euronews reported that X’s number of daily active users fell across the European Union between September 2023 and October 2024, while multiple sources have also pointed out that the company has lost billions of dollars in advertising revenue since Musk bought the company in 2022.

Fidias’ defence of Musk comes at the end of a week in which Musk performed a Nazi salute twice at a rally staged by United States President Donald Trump.

Musk is set to lead the US’ new department of government efficiency, which has as its stated aim the reduction of wasteful government spending and the elimination of regulations which are considered unnecessary.