Between June and July 2026, Europol and the Spanish Intelligence Center for Counter-Terrorism and Organized Crime (CITCO) carried out a major transnational operation to combat violent extremist propaganda on the Internet, according to a statement published by the agency on Friday 24 July.
During several “Referral Action Days”, investigators from nine Member States (Belgium, Spain, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Sweden) identified and flagged around 4,340 illegal URLs in order to disrupt their dissemination and support new police investigations.
The action specifically targeted ‘The Com’, a nebulous network of nihilistic groups targeting young people via social networks and online video games. This network promotes extreme violence (self-harm, child sexual abuse material, animal cruelty) and regularly uses intimidation tactics to push Internet users into taking action.
This phenomenon has already been identified by Europol in its latest report on terrorism and violent extremism (see EUROPE 13909/31), which highlights a marked trend towards younger perpetrators among those arrested for this type of crime.
As part of the COMPASS project and the European ProtectEU programme, the operation also sought to raise awareness and strengthen the responsiveness of online platforms to the proliferation of such content. (Original version in French by Justine Manaud)