# CE2004070EN.01004601.xml

| 20.3.2004 | EN | Official Journal of the European Union | CE 70/46 |
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20.3.2004

EN

Official Journal of the European Union

CE 70/46

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(2004/C 70 E/049)

WRITTEN QUESTION E-1486/03

by Claude Moraes (PSE) to the Commission

(2 May 2003)

Subject:   Cyber-racism

Subject:

The European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia has recently commissioned research on the proliferation of websites which are designed to incite racial hatred. Is the European Commission aware of this proliferation and what is the Commission's view on the increase in such sites?

Answer given by Mr Vitorino on behalf of the Commission

(18 June 2003)

(18 June 2003)

The Commission firmly condemns racism and xenophobia, which are a direct violation of the principles of liberty, democracy, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms and the rule of law, principles upon which the Union is founded and which are common to the Member States as stated in Article 6 of the Treaty on the European Union.

The Commission presented in November 2001 a proposal for a Framework Decision (1), a legislative instrument in the field of penal law to ensure that the same racist and xenophobic conducts are punishable by the same penalties in all Member States and secondly, to improve and encourage judicial cooperation by removing potential obstacles. The Commission's approach on this issue is to ensure that racist and xenophobic content on the Internet is criminalised in all Member States. The basic idea would be contained in the principle, ‘what is illegal off-line is illegal on-line’. Moreover, the proposal also establishes some minimum criteria as regards to jurisdiction for this type of offences. At present, negotiations on this legislative instrument are blocked at Council and the Commission regrets that some Member States are not willing to strengthening the Union ‘acquis’ contained in the Council Joint Action (2) adopted in 1996 on this issue.

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Regarding Community instruments, Article 15 of the Electronic Commerce Directive (3) lays down that service providers who store information supplied by and at the request of a recipient of the service need to expeditiously remove access to the information once they are informed of the illegality of this information.

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Recital 48 of the Directive introduces the possibility for Member States to require hosting service providers to apply ‘duties of care’ in order to detect and prevent illegal activity.

At international level, fifteen countries — including ten Member States- have signed the Additional Protocol to the Council of Europe's Convention on Cybercrime, concerning the criminalisation of acts of a racist and xenophobic nature, committed through the use of computer systems.

The Safer Internet Action Plan (4) also offers scope for funding action against racism (hotlines and awareness-raising) and the Safer Internet Forum which is being set up under the Action Plan will discuss practical ways of co-operating in this respect.

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(1)  OJ C 75 E, 26.3.2002.

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(2)  OJ L 185, 24.7.1996.

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(3)  Directive 2000/31/EC of the Parliament and of the Council of 8 June 2000 on certain legal aspects of information society services, in particular electronic commerce, in the Internal Market, OJ L 178, 17.7.2000.

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(4)  COM(2002) 152 final.

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