At the 11th meeting of the EU High Level Group, the Council of Europe Director of Anti-Discrimination, Jeroen Schokkenbroek, recalled the commitments of the 46 Council of Europe member states expressed in the Reykjavik Declaration of May 2023, when they committed to ensuring equality, combating any kind of discrimination and strengthening work towards inclusive societies. He also recalled that the European Court of Human Rights and the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) have repeatedly addressed the harmful effects of hate speech and hate crime on individuals, groups and democratic societies.

The Director emphasised that the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe took an essential further step by adopting common European standards through its Recommendation CM/Rec (2022)16 on Combating Hate Speech and the ongoing work on a draft Recommendation on combating hate crime. He also underlined the invaluable contribution of non-legal measures, such as training, education, the use of counter-speech, and the partnership between civil society organisations and state authorities. He illustrated his points by making references to ongoing EU- CoE joint projects.

In the panel “Countering hate speech online: regulatory framework, policy tools and data”, the Council of Europe presented its EU-CoE joint cooperation programmes, including Increasing Civil Society Organisations’ knowledge and capacities to tackle hate speech online and Combating Hate Speech in Sport.

In the panel entitled “The hate speech and hate crime dimension of national action plans and strategies against racism, xenophobia and antisemitism”, the major successes and shortcomings of such policies observed by ECRI in the framework of its monitoring work were presented.