Vera Jourova says she is not ready to promote EU-wide legislation to fine internet companies for failing to take down hate speech

The EU’s justice commissioner is resisting calls to follow Theresa May’s lead and legislate to fine internet companies who fail to take down hate speech.

Vera Jourova condemned Facebook as a “highway for hatred” on Thursday, but the former Czech minister said she was not yet ready to promote EU-wide legislation similar to that being pursued in the UK, France and Germany. “I would never say they [the UK, France and Germany] are wrong, but we all have the responsibility to react to this challenge with necessary and proportionate reaction,” she told the Guardian.

In Britain, May is demanding that internet companies remove hateful content, in particular that aligned to terror organisations, within two hours of being discovered, or face financial sanctions. In June the prime minister agreed with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, that the UK and France would create a new legal liability for tech companies if they fail to remove inflammatory content.

Under a law due to come into effect next month in Germany, social media companies face fines of up to €50m (£43m) if they persistently fail to remove illegal content from their sites.

The commission is instead offering further guidance to internet companies about how they improve their record by complying with a voluntary code of conduct drawn up last year and so far adopted by Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Unveiling new EU measures on Thursday to help these companies perform better against the code of conduct, Jourova said she had personally been targeted by trolls. “When we started discussing the future code of conduct, I first met Facebook managers here and I told them I had just cancelled my Facebook account because it was the highway for hatred, and I am not willing to support it,” she told a news conference in Brussels.



However, she said living behind the iron curtain in what was then Czechoslovakia made her loth to bring forward cross-EU legislation. “My background is from the communist regime and we have a fantastic achievement, freedom of speech, here … I don’t like this running to the internet, and we politicians blaming the internet for all our problems. It’s not like that,” she said.

The commission is asking Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other volunteers to the code to work more closely with non-governmental organisations which can flag up illegal content and withdraw material within 24 hours of it appearing.

Jourova said she might be willing to legislate later on if the voluntary code of conduct did not produce adequate results. “We have not excluded if this does not work,” she said, adding that a decision would be made in May. “We cannot accept a Wild West, we must act,” she said. “[Hate speech] can lead to concrete violence against concrete people in real life and we must not tolerate it.”

However, Jourova said she would also resist any suggestions that the EU should tackle “fake news” for fear of becoming a “European ministry for truth”. “I am very far from this,” she said.

Jourova claimed that the voluntary code was working “relatively” well, with Facebook removing 66.5% of material they had been notified was hateful between December and May this year. Twitter removed 37.4% and YouTube took action following 66% of the notifications from users. In just over half of cases, the tech companies assessed notifications in less than 24 hours, although in 13% of cases it took more than a week.