At the Spring Session of the Congress, the members of the Chamber of Local Authorities held a thematic debate, on 23 March 2022, entitled “Fake news, threats and violence - pressure on mayors in the current crises in Europe”.

“Local and regional politicians, mayors and councillors are increasingly exposed to hate speech and online disinformation, but also verbal or physical threats, especially during election campaigns. Exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic, and more recently by the Russia’s war on Ukraine, this phenomenon has a paralysing effect on our democracies and political life at local and regional levels,” highlighted Wilma Delissen Van Tongerlo (Netherlands, ILDG), who is Co-Rapporteur of a new Congress report currently in preparation.  

"Misinformation particularly affects young people who are more exposed to social networks. This leads to a loss of trust in democracy, more discrimination and hate speech, with a deleterious impact on young people," stressed Michael Bryan, youth delegate (United-Kingdom), calling for investment in information gathering and verification.

Ahead of this thematic debate, an inter-university study on this very topic, entitled "COUNTERFAKE - A scientific basis for a policy against fake news and hate speech", has been published and was presented during the meeting of the Chamber. Its findings, based on the experiences of local and regional politicians in Council of Europe member States, will be incorporated into the new report, to be prepared and discussed by the Congress Governance Committee at its June meeting.

See also :

 Mediabox interview with Prof. Dr. Robert Müller-Török and Prof. Dr. Alexander Prosser (Youtube)

 Video of the debate

For further information :

• Local democracy – a victim of fake news and hate speech
• How to preserve local democracy in the face of fakes news and hate speech?

In order to explore how fake news and hate speech affect local democracy, the Congress engaged in a scientific co-operation project involving academics and experts from academic institutions in Ludwigsburg, Budapest, Bucharest, Kosice and Vienna. The Congress contributed to the design of the project as well as the distribution of the research questionnaire to all its members and young delegates. Nearly 200 Congress members shared their experiences.

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42nd Session:

Agenda – Web file – Multimedia (Live webcasts, interviews, videos and photo)