欧盟反恐协调员呼吁加大对社交平台青少年极端化内容的压力

EU counterterror envoy urges pressure on social platforms over youth extremism
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The EU needs to put more pressure on social media platforms that allow the radicalisation of young people on the internet at a time when minors are being recruited to stage terror attacks, according to the bloc’s counterterrorism co-ordinator Bartjan Wegter.
“The whole online digital environment in a way has become, if you will, a Petri dish of the connection between different kinds of threats,” Wegter told the FT.
“There is much more that can be done and it should be done by . . . the platforms,” Wegter said, adding that the EU’s current digital rule book on extremist content “certainly doesn’t cover all the needs that are out there”.
“We could turn on the screws a little bit in terms of focusing on what we all know is happening, and is not being covered by . . . sometimes well-intended efforts by everybody involved,” he added.
“Perhaps there’s more that can be done in terms of legislation. I’m not excluding it. But I would argue that our focus should really be on the strengthened dialogue with the industry at large,” he said.
The EU has not seen any large-scale terrorist attacks in almost a decade — Isis launched big attacks in France and Belgium in 2015 and 2016, and in Spain in 2017 — but there has been a rise in smaller attacks staged by individuals who are often recruited online by extremist groups or by state actors employing similar tactics.
Wegter said that the nature of terrorist threats had changed from “structured, organised terrorist organisations abroad”, such as the Islamist extremist organisations al-Qaeda and Isis, “towards a much more diffused threat”.
“Now, terrorist content is available, freely available on the internet,” he said.
“We’ve seen a huge increase in the number of minors and young adolescents that have been involved in these attacks,” said Wegter. “You could call it self-service terrorism,” he said, as a lot of young people were “self-initiated” through online content.
He said that while the EU had long been in dialogue with the industry on radicalisation, the results had been limited. “If we then go each our separate ways and in practice we see that radicalisation is increasing, then there’s something wrong.”
In the EU, large online platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and TikTok already face a number of obligations under the Digital Services Act, including removing illegal content and avoiding addictive design.
Companies have also launched their own campaigns. Meta has, for instance, run a programme that shows educational material to those who followed accounts associated with terrorism after the accounts have been removed.
The EU’s terrorist content regulation means online platforms have to take down content identified as terrorist, but Wegter said the issue was “the more murky content . . . that cannot be qualified one on one as being terrorist, but that does incite hatred.”
Meta declined to comment.
In the US, social media platforms are being hit by a wave of court proceedings over harmful content and addictive design. Last week Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, agreed to new safety features for its social media apps as part of an $18bn court settlement.
Wegter said that while he did not necessarily advocate for similar court proceedings in Europe, “a mix of pressure and dialogue is probably ideal” in dealing with the platforms. “We’ve reached a point where social media impunity has come to an end,” he said.
A key issue raised by the Dutch diplomat was the recruitment of potential attackers by state actors that are increasingly employing terrorist tactics. One example he gave was a series of antisemitic attacks in Belgium, the Netherlands, the UK and France which were claimed by Ashab al-Yamin, a group that has been linked to Iran.
“Malign state actors, Iran specifically, we’ve seen Russia as well, [are] using criminals or individuals in the EU, sometimes minors, to carry out sabotage activities, even attacks,” Wegter said.
“The objective [is], apparently . . . to disrupt our society, to create polarisation etc, which are typically the goals of terrorist organisations as well,” he added.
He said that while jihadis were “still the number one threat today”, there were also other violent extremist movements, including far-right extremism and, to a lesser degree, far-left groups.
Last year, 45 terrorist attacks were reported in the EU including foiled attacks, of which more than half had a jihadi motive, according to Europol.
Wegter has been counterterrorism co-ordinator since 2024, taking over a role that was created in the wake of the 2004 attacks on commuter trains in Madrid, which killed almost 200 people and injured thousands.
Additional reporting by Barbara Moens in Brussels