On Wednesday evening (28 April), the European Parliament adopted the Regulation on the removal of online terrorist content, including text, images, sound and video recordings, live broadcasts, and other guides to incite or prepare acts (bomb-making). This was done as part of the second reading, but without a vote, as no changes were made to the text. The Regulation will come into force 20 days after its publication in the Official Journal of the EU and apply 12 months later.
On Wednesday evening, MEPs held a final debate on this tool, which aims to order content hosting platforms and service providers to quickly remove terrorist content from the internet within one hour, under threat of financial sanctions, with arrangements in place for smaller companies.
According to the European Parliament’s rapporteur, Patryk Jaki (ECR) from Poland, such content is reportedly rapidly increasing, with Facebook having removed over 43 million pieces of such content in 2020.
The Regulation also paves the way for cross-border injunctions, whereby a Member State can order a company based in another Member State to remove this content, with a possible appeal to the competent national authority.
The Regulation does not establish a general obligation to monitor or filter content but provides for proactive measures at the discretion of the hosting service providers. However, a national authority may require a platform to implement such proactive measures if it is found to be exposed to such content more often than others.
Despite the assurances given again by the rapporteur on Wednesday evening on the protection of freedom of expression and the fact that the Regulation will not prevent “any controversial debate” or hinder journalistic or academic work, the Regulation has been perceived badly by some European associations such as EDRi, which denounce an attack on individual freedoms and deplore the fact that the European Parliament has adopted “new censorship tools”.
Link to the rules: https://bit.ly/3u2yswV (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)