The 2025 edition of the Council of Europe’s No Hate Speech Week has kicked off in Strasbourg today, on the International Day for Countering Hate Speech.

The three-day event offers a platform to discuss recent legal and policy developments, to share innovative practices, and to facilitate peer-to-peer exchanges in order to build strong networks. The event was opened by Alain Berset, Secretary General of the Council of Europe, Ambassador Francesca Camilleri Vettiger, Permanent Representative of the Republic of Malta to the Council of Europe, Michael McGrath, European Commissioner for Democracy, Justice, the Rule of Law and Consumer Protection, and Virginia Gamba, United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Acting Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide (by video).

Hate speech negatively affects individuals, groups and societies in a variety of ways and with different degrees of severity, including by instilling fear in and causing humiliation to those it targets and by having a chilling effect on participation in public debate, which is detrimental to democracy. Recent global crises fuel surges of hate speech intertwined with and reinforced by disinformation about the groups targeted: content-shaping algorithms often amplify the most polarising messages scapegoating for example minority groups.

The event is bringing together 110 representatives of national, regional and local authorities, equality bodies and Ombuds offices, civil society organisations, academia, internet industry, the media, elected officials, and other stakeholders. The umbrella theme of the week is “Enhance legal and non-legal measures against hate speech through a multi-stakeholder approach”. Committee of Ministers’ Recommendation CM/Rec(2022)16 invites member states, based on the European Convention of Human Rights and related case-law by the European Court of Human Rights, to define when hate speech should be prohibited under criminal, civil or administrative law. Some examples of multi-stakeholder approach are available in the recently published Compilation of promising practices on combating hate speech at national level . Furthermore, resources from civil society organisations and other partners which can serve as promising practices are uploaded regularly in the Knowledge hub on combating hate speech.

The No Hate Speech Week is organised under the Maltese Presidency of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe in the framework of the EU/CoE Joint Project "Increasing Civil Society Organisations’ knowledge and capacities to tackle hate speech online – phase 2".