The Council of Europe participated in the 2022 edition of the European Dialogue on Internet Governance (EuroDIG).

Relevant Organisation’s work and standards were shared in debates taking place in a hybrid format, in Trieste from 20-22 June.

Director of Information Society - Action against Crime Jan Kleijssen contributed to the session on  Regulating emerging technologies: artificial intelligence and data governance with the keynote speech, whilst the Chair of the Committee on Artificial Intelligence of the Council of Europe Thomas Schneider moderated the subsequent panel debate. The session included representatives of academia, government and civil society and revolved around issues of policy choices, multilateral cooperation and interaction with civil society on the road to trustworthy AI.

The Council of Europe’s human rights perspective of responding to disinformation was discussed in another session in the context of Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine. Disinformation has polarized public debate on the pandemic and the measures to deal with it, and a similar phenomenon is present especially on social media with regard to the Russian aggression against Ukraine. While crisis and conflict situations may call for extraordinary measures, including restrictions on freedom of expression, there are requirements under the European Convention on Human Rights to ensure the legality, necessity and proportionality of such measures.

The Cybercrime Convention Committee (T-CY) representative contributed to the discussions regarding International Cooperation on Criminal Justice in Cyberspace with updates on the Second Additional Protocol to the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime, and the United Nations-led process of elaborating an international instrument on Countering the Use of Information and Communications Technologies for Criminal Purposes. Discussion with civil society on these topics centered upon the safeguards and guarantees under the Second Protocol, as well as options for direct cooperation (or lack thereof) in the proposed texts of the draft UN treaty.

The Eurodig brings together representatives of governments, international organisations, business, civil society, academia and the technical community to discuss in internet-related public policy issues.

The recordings of the sessions can be found here.