Europe is launching a fresh crackdown on online terror propaganda by threatening some of the largest internet companies such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter with the imposition of fresh fines should they fail to act.

The European Commission detailed its toughened stance after determining that a voluntary approach of self-regulation was not achieving the desired results and will instead demand removal of terror-related content such as videos, text and audio by way of new regulations.

A draft version of the new regulations won’t be published until next month but it is believed to include a one-hour time limit for the removal of content flagged as terror material by law enforcement agencies.

Addressing the Financial Times, Julian King, EU commissioner for security, said: “We cannot afford to relax or become complacent in the face of such a shadowy and destructive phenomenon.

“The difference in size and resources means platforms have differing capabilities to act against terrorist content and their policies for doing so are not always transparent. All this leads to such content continuing to proliferate across the internet, reappearing once deleted and spreading from platform to platform.”

Europe’s frustrations emanate from a spate of high-profile terror attacks across the continent in recent years, despite the largest content providers such as Google and Facebook now removing terror material automatically.

The UK has already threatened a unilateral tax penalty should tech giants fail to up their policing of terror content.