Europol has supported 18 European law enforcement agencies in the 2024 Referral Action Day (RAD) on hate speech and incitement to violence targeting ethnoreligious groups.
Spanish and Hungarian authorities led the action, which resulted in a record number of online content being identified.
In total, 12 countries collected over 6,350 links from 46 online platforms and 20 websites that incite violence or contain hate speech against ethnoreligious groups.
This includes material produced or disseminated by organisations, individuals or groups containing illegal hate speech, such as anti-Semitic hate speech, as well as material celebrating or calling for violent or terrorist acts against an ethnoreligious group.Â
Law enforcement authorities have identified an increasing polarisation of the online sphere, especially after 7 October 2023.
All forms of violence identified during the investigation were referred to online service providers for assessment under their terms of service. In addition, authorities could also issue legally binding removal orders on the action day.
Cooperation with online service providers is essential to combat illegal online content, such as hate speech, incitement to violence, violent extremism and terrorism. Europol is strengthening this effort by bringing together relevant partners for cross-border cooperation and joint action. Private parties are also key partners.
Europol experts from the EU Internet Referral Unit (EU IRU) coordinated the international action and supported national counterterrorism police units by identifying, collecting and referring online hate speech content.
Europol relied extensively on the EU Council Framework Decision 2008/913/JHA on combating racism and xenophobia, which tackles the dissemination of hate speech by ensuring that EU Member States have criminal penalties and other measures in place.
