At the second EU Internet Forum on Thursday 8 December, Migration, Internal Affairs and Citizenship Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos made a positive assessment of the battle to tackle terrorism online, but said that more needs to be done.
The EU Internet Forum was set up in December 2015 and assembles EU interior ministers each year, along with representatives of big Internet companies, Europol representatives, MEPs and the EU coordinator for the fight against terrorism. Their aim is to achieve a voluntary common approach, based on a public-private partnership, in order to detect and combat terrorist content and hate speeches online.
Avramopoulos said that terrorists abuse the internet, which is a symbol of fundamental freedoms, a means of communication and freedom of expression. He said the outcome of the project was positive, but more could and should be done. Since the launch of the forum twelve months ago, Europol has closed down more than 20,000 web pages with terrorist content.
The second forum took a two-pronged approach: firstly, avoiding at all cost the reposting of withdrawn terrorist content online. To this end, a database has been set up in collaboration with big web companies, such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Microsoft, to ensure that any content identified as terrorist is not re-posted. Secondly, proposing an alternative for the most vulnerable and marginalised citizens who would be tempted by extremist propaganda. To this end, the European Union has released a budget of 10 million euros for developing alternatives and counter-messages to render civil society responsible.
We are only at the beginning, said Security Union Commissioner Julian King, as the forum is a long-term project. It is, he said, already a success, however, adding that key elements of the EU response to extremist and terrorist propaganda online must be tolerance and inclusion. (Original version in French by Thomas Régnier)