WATCH: JD Vance Eviscerates European Leaders Right To Their Faces At Munich Conference

Vice President J.D. Vance ripped into Europe’s political class on Friday, admonishing lawmakers for authoring laws that have criminalized free speech and led to the imprisonment of conservatives for voicing (and praying) their beliefs.

Vance harbored no quarter for members of the U.K. Parliament after they passed last year a law that prohibits “stirring up hatred” through speech that targets race, ethnicity, religion, or gender, among other protected categories. Since then, the law has been the impetus for a number of high-profile arrests, including of one man who raged against recent Muslim immigrants he accused of being behind the stabbing of a local 17-year-old. He was right.

More than 120 people have been imprisoned under the Communications Act, according to AA.

Vance singled out the U.K. at Munich’s security conference for being among Europe’s worst free speech offenders.

“I look to Brussels, where E.U. commissars warn that they intend to shut down social media during times of civil unrest the moment what they spot to be ‘hateful content,'” said Vance before turning to Germany. “Or to this very country, where police have carried out raids against citizens suspected of posting anti-feminist comments online as part of ‘combatting misogyny on the internet,’ a day of action.”

Although the U.K. has been an epicenter of Europe’s most high-profile free speech restrictions, other countries have kept pace. Swedish courts earlier this month convicted a Christian activist who burned a Quran during a public protest. Doing so “resulted in his friend’s murder,” Vance said, chastising the Nordic nation’s political elite.

“As the judge in his case chillingly noted, ‘Sweden’s laws to supposedly protection freedom of expression do not, in fact… grant a free pass to do or say anything without risking offending the group that holds that belief.”

Turning back to the U.K., he added, “The backslide away from conscience liberties has placed the liberties of religious Britains in particular in the crosshairs.”

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He cited the case of Adam Connor, a physiotherapist and Army veteran who was charged with a hate crime after standing 50 feet from an abortion clinic and praying silently for three minutes. “Not obstructing anyone, not interacting with anyone, just silently praying on his own,” the vice president said.

Courts ultimately found Connor guilty of violating the country’s new buffer zone law, which prohibits “political activity” within 150 meters of an abortion clinic. His punishment, Vance went on, included paying “thousands of pounds in legal costs” to prosecutors.

“I wish I could say that this was a fluke, a one-off crazy example of a badly written law being enacted against a single person. But no… Free speech, I fear, is in retreat,” he added.

The transatlantic partnership that has existed for years between the U.S. and Europe is facing its greatest test in decades as President Trump seeks concessions from European countries on security, trade, and free speech. He has forged ahead with peace talks between Russia and Ukraine without other European leaders, and Vance overnight told the Wall Street Journal that the administration wouldn’t rule out economic or military sanctions against Russia if they failed to guarantee Kyiv’s long-term independence.

“There are economic tools of leverage; there are, of course, military tools of leverage,” Vance promised.