Welcome to Liberties' monthly round-up, where we catch you up on the most pressing human rights topics we've been working on. This month, we collaborated with European Partnership for Democracy to publish a paper on the potential of Article 34 of the Digital Services Act to protect online civic discourse and the integrity of elections. With 2024 touted to be the biggest global election year in history, this year will be critical to determine what safeguards should be put in place to tackle the risks search engines and digital platforms pose to democracy.
In a nutshell
🎉 CERV Grant: Liberties, with four of our members, has been awarded the EU CERV Action Grant. We will use it to train civil society organisations on how to build public support using evidence-based research & audience-tested messages.
🤖 AI vs Democracy: Liberties’ Head of Tech & Rights Eva Simon was a guest speaker at an event hosted by the German Marshall Fund on the challenges AI poses in Hungary and Poland
⚖️ Rule of Law: Liberties’ executive director Balazs Denes and Senior Advocacy Consultant Viktor Kazai took part in a community meeting hosted by the European Policy Centre ahead of European elections.
In focus
DSA: New Risk Assessments To Protect Civic Discourse and Electoral Processes
Civil Liberties Union For Europe (Liberties) in collaboration with the European Partnership for Democracy (EPD) has produced a paper on how the Digital Services Act can ensure robust protection of civic discourse and electoral processes. Read more here.
2024 will be the biggest global election year in history
With over half the global population eligible to vote in elections, 2024 will be a stress-test for democracy. In our kick-off newsletter, we tease upcoming projects, share good news & take the EU's political temperature. Our prediction? Change is coming. Read more here.
Member's Corner
Network news
🇱🇹 Fairytales = LGBT Propaganda? Human Rights Monitoring Institute and other others made a joint submission to the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe concerning the implementation of an ECHR decision, which found measures imposed by the Lithuanian government on a children’s book depicting same-sex marriage were illegitimate. Learn more.
🇸🇪 Congrats Civil Rights Defenders: The National Award for the Protection of Freedom Of Speech was awarded to CRD by the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine.
🇪🇪 I’ll see you in court: The Estonian Civil Rights Centre successfully raised €8,000 to continue their legal defence of young people who were fined for demonstrating in support of Palestine. Read more about the case here.
What we're reading/listening to
- Rule of law:
- Anti-corruption: 5 ways EU’s ethics body just might work — or not - Politico
- Privacy: EU-backed surveillance software for detecting child abuse has serious flaws, manufacturer admits - Follow the Money
- Elections:
Next Month
Liberties' Rule of Law Report 2024: The Countdown Begins
Thanks to the hard work of our member organisations, Liberties has already started sending individual country reports to the European Commission, whose country visits to member states are underway as we speak. Our country reports, which provide a snapshot of how the rule of law is faring, inform the Commission's fact-finding mission in preparation of its own report due in the summer.
It won't be long until Liberties' Rule of Law Report is officially launched, which highlights rule of law trends across 19 EU member states across six categories and country-specific analysis. Read last year's report and thematic analysis here.
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Take care,
Eleanor & the Liberties Team
