As the world evolves towards digitalization, the use of and reliance on information technology has become more and more pervasive in society. Targeting and illegally exploiting computer systems and data have also become increasingly common.

The COVID-19 global pandemic has spurred an unprecedented increase in cyber-based illegal activities. Offences involving computers have grown rapidly both in number and in sophistication, and even more alarmingly since the beginning of the pandemic. 

Developing effective countermeasures has proven to be challenging in the global context, as well as aligning legislation, strategies and policies in a consistent and harmonized manner. Heterogeneous legal frameworks, lack of national strategies, limited criminal justice capacities to counter cybercrime and secure electronic evidence, and information infrastructures that are still scarcely secured in a number of countries, has made societies worldwide vulnerable targets for cybercrime. Moreover, governments struggle in reconciling effective responses to cybercrime with human rights and rule of law requirements online.

The action that the Council of Europe has been developing to tackle these issues is based on strengthening capacities of criminal justice authorities worldwide on the basis of the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime, which is the only binding international instrument on this issue that provides consistent definitions of conducts to be criminalized, procedural powers for investigations and prosecutions, and provisions for international cooperation.

The Convention with already 66 Parties serves as a guideline for any country developing comprehensive national legislation against cybercrime and as a framework for international cooperation between States Parties to this treaty.

The formula of the Budapest Convention as the common standard backed up by the Cybercrime Convention Committee (T-CY) and capacity building through Cybercrime Programme Office (C-PROC) continues to ensure impact. With the future Second Additional Protocol on enhanced cooperation and disclosure of electronic evidence, the mechanism of the Budapest Convention is likely to remain the most relevant international standard for years to come.

Parliamentarians, both as advocates and as lawmakers, fully mobilized, can make a substantive and decisive impact in promoting universality and implementation of the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime and its First Additional Protocol on Xenophobia and Racism, as well as generating wider awareness of the forthcoming Second Additional Protocol, accompanied by necessary safeguards to ensure adequate privacy and data protections, as appropriate. 

Parliamentarians for Global Action, GLACY+ project and Octopus Project of the Council of Europe are joining efforts to co-organise a series of thematic webinars to promote the importance of the universality and implementation of the Budapest Convention and its Protocol/s to ensure an effective and coordinated approach to tackle cybercrime, a threat to human rights, democracy and the rule of law. 

This series of webinars is intended to provide Parliamentarians and other relevant policy makers with a platform for identifying effective approaches to countering cybercrime in their respective countries, and how to make use of the opportunities offered by the mechanism of the Budapest Convention.

As a result of these thematic webinars, it is expected that participants will:

• Become more familiar with the main attributes of the Budapest Convention as a guideline for domestic cybercrime legislation, including legal tools to get access to e-evidence  as well as a framework for international cooperation
• Be better equipped to promote universality and implementation of the Budapest Convention, as appropriate, in their respective countries
• Be better informed regarding related capacity building programmes organized by the Council of Europe

• Budapest Convention on Cybercrime
• First Additional Protocol to the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime (concerning the criminalisation of acts of a racist and xenophobic nature committed through computer systems)
• Second Additional Protocol to the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime (on enhanced cooperation on cybercrime and electronic evidence)
• Octopus Project webpage
• GLACY+ project webpage
• Parliamentarians for Global Action website