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. 

Law enforcement authorities have identified an increasing polarisation of the online sphere, especially after 7 October 2023.

Key collaboration with service providers

All forms of violence identified during the investigation were referred to online service providers for assessment under their own terms of service. In addition, authorities were also able to 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’s crucial role in combating hate speech

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.

The EU IRU is comprised of a team of experts who detect and investigate malicious content on the internet and in social media. The EU IRU has just published the “Online jihadist propaganda: 2023 in review”, an analysis of the major trends and developments in the online propaganda of the most prominent Sunni jihadists organisations – the Islamic State (IS) and al-Qaeda (AQ). The review covers the period from 1 January to 31 December 2023 and identifies the dominant themes and types of productions exploited by the two groups during this period. 

Countries involved

National Internet Referral Units and specialised police units from the following countries took part in this Referral Action Day: Albania, Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom.