On December 11, 2012 the EU Parliament endorsed the first ever EU official policy on digital freedoms, Resolution on A Digital Freedom Strategy in EU foreign policy.
Ms. Marietje Schaake, a Dutch MEP, and the Rapporteur on Parliament’s policy in her speech at the Parliament emphasized the need to include digital freedoms in EU’s conditionality, importance of providing people access to ICT and using ICT during such political events as elections, significance of more transparency and accountability in terms of technology export.
The adopted Parliament’s resolution underlines such issues of importance in terms of protecting digital freedoms: recognizing access to Internet as a fundamental right, ensuring online security, enforcing good internet governance and recognizing the need to protect freedoms for assembly and association online.
The Parliament calls on the Commission and the Council to adopt EU Strategy on Digital Freedom as soon as possible. According to the Resolution text, the Parliament:
“60. Recognises that human rights must also be protected online, and believes that ICTs should be mainstreamed in all EU programmes, especially in the European Neighbourhood Policy and the strategic partnerships, in order to advance this effort;
61. Calls for the recognition by the EU of digital freedoms as fundamental rights and as indispensable prerequisites for enjoying universal human rights such as privacy, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly and access to information and ensuring transparency and accountability in public life;
62. Calls on the Commission and Council to support, train and empower human rights defenders, civil society activists and independent journalists using ICTs in their activities and to assert the related fundamental rights of privacy, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly and freedom of association online;
63. Asks Member States not to use the exception of public order as a restrictive measure to limit civil society organisations' fundamental rights of assembly and demonstration, and recalls that any such exception must be motivated and proportional."
More on connection between new technology and fundamental freedoms, specifically the rights to freedom of association and peaceful assembly, can be read in ICNL’s article on Association and Assembly in Digital Age. In this article the authors explore recent practices in regulation of associational activities occurring on the Internet. The authors argue that many of the social network groups are protected “associations” under international law. They also argue that the freedom of assembly protects groups that may not technically qualify as “associations” under international law. The article examines previous attempts of regulation on new technology under international law and conclude that longstanding commitments require states to respect the exercise of fundamental freedoms enabled by new technologies, including the Internet, mobile networks, social media, and technologies arising in the future.