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17
November
2025

Regulating online terrorist content – Balancing public safety and fundamental rights

Online terrorist content is a threat to fundamental rights, rule of law and democracy. EU measures to tackle such content aim to prevent terrorism while upholding these values. FRA’s report looks at how online terrorist content is detected and removed under EU legislation. It highlights challenges in interpreting rules, risks of over-removal and potential impacts on freedom of expression. It finds that moderation practices by authorities and platforms can disproportionately affect certain groups, such as Muslims and Arabic speakers, while far-right content often receives less scrutiny. The findings, based on research and expert interviews with those addressing online terrorist content, offer ways to improve transparency in content moderation and to better balance public security and fundamental rights, contributing to wider debates on regulating online content responsibly.

Terrorist content online presents a key threat to fundamental rights, democracy and the rule of law. The EU’s legislative and other efforts to address such content and prevent terrorism, therefore, also serve to protect rights.

At the same time, such measures and their practical application to counter online terrorism must avoid overreaching with respect to legitimate content that is not terrorist in nature. This is important for the protection of a range of rights, from freedom of expression to prohibition of discrimination, which serves to ensure the legitimacy of these important efforts.

This report examines the EU’s key legal instrument in this field, Regulation (EU) 2021/784 on addressing the dissemination of terrorist content online. It looks at how the regulation and its application in practice impacts fundamental rights, drawing on the experience of over 60 experts. These include practitioners from law enforcement, counterterrorism, regulatory and other authorities working with the regulation, staff of companies providing online hosting services that the regulation addresses, and civil-society and academic experts with technical knowledge on the topic.

The results provide valuable insights into how these practitioners and experts experience the practical application of the regulation and where – based on their knowledge and expertise – they see particular challenges with regard to fundamental rights. At the same time, the report identifies specific practices that support the application of the regulation – and which address the proliferation of terrorist content online more broadly – in a manner that helps overcome some of these issues and better safeguards fundamental rights.

As the regulation became applicable in 2022, its application is necessarily still evolving. In this regard, the evidence contained in this report can be used to address the identified challenges, foster a common interpretation of the regulation, its obligations and applicable safeguards, and promote an effective framework for addressing the proliferation of online terrorist content in full respect of fundamental rights.

 

Sirpa Rautio
Director