The European Parliament's Civil Liberties Committee held a first exchange of views on Monday 4 February regarding the Commission's legislative proposal to remove online terrorist content within one hour, a proposal that was agreed by the Member States in December (see EUROPE 12154).
The British rapporteur of the ECR group, Daniel Dalton, believes the proposal is urgent, but he also proposed some amendments, considering in particular that the initial text (see EUROPE 12095) could be impossible to implement for medium-sized platforms and SMEs. He also warned against the risk of establishing widespread surveillance and introducing automatic censorship. “The objective of this proposal is right”, but it must “be more focused”, he explained.
In particular, the rapporteur expressed concern about the proposal’s flagship measure: withdrawal within an hour. He is of the opinion that duplication between authorities issuing withdrawal orders should be avoided and recalled that such content has often been online for more than an hour by the time it is detected. It would therefore be appropriate to study the average time this content is present on platforms and websites. He also believes that smaller structures should benefit from more flexible rules.
Daniel Dalton has in any case argued for clear guidelines and for it not to be left to platforms to decide whether or not they something is radical terrorist content. Since this identification is difficult to make, according to him, the risk would be that the platforms would censor “more than was reasonable”. The rapporteur has stuck to the definition of the European directive on the fight against terrorism, which, although not perfect, remains the best definition, he said. For the remainder, he considered that proactive measures imposed by the competent authority should be reasonable in relation to the ability of the hosting service provider to implement them.
The rapporteur’s proposal was generally well received, with several groups such as the EPP wanting the dossier to be completed before the end of Parliament’s mandate. However, the Greens/EFA expressed concern that these new instruments could turn against individual freedoms. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)