Parliamentary question - E-001772/2017(ASW)Parliamentary question
E-001772/2017(ASW)
European Parliament

Answer given by Mr Avramopoulos on behalf of the Commission

13.6.2017

Written question

1. While the Europol Regulation[1] stipulates Europol's task to refer terrorist material to online service providers, the success rate of take-downs by companies depends on cooperation developed with these companies. The EU Internet Forum has contributed significantly to the development of such cooperation: it has allowed the EU Internet Referral Unit within Europol (EU IRU), one of its key stakeholders, to build solid and long-standing relations, reach out to new Internet companies to raise awareness of terrorists' exploitation of their platforms and exchange and train on best referral practices.

2. The Commission does not have statistics on the proportion of illegal content referred by EU IRU. It should be noted that the baseline for referrals is its mandate, the EU legal framework on terrorist offences[2] as well as the terms and conditions set by the companies. When the EU IRU scans for terrorist material it refers it to the company where it assesses it to have breached their terms and conditions.

3a. The EU IRU has referred some 636 cases to Member States for de-confliction, representing 2.2% of the total number of referrals. The IRU has received some 2762 cases from Member States for further referrals to companies, i.e. 9% of the total number of referrals.

3b. The EU IRU does not keep any statistics of how many of the referrals to Member States led to the opening of an investigation.

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