EU Terrorist Content Online Regulation
What it does
Under TERREG, a designated authority in any member state can order a hosting service anywhere in the EU to remove content it deems terrorist within one hour of receipt. No judicial authorization is required before the order, and platforms exposed to such content must adopt specific measures against its reappearance. Penalties reach 4 percent of global turnover for systematic noncompliance. Applied since June 7, 2022.
Why it matters
TERREG normalized the one-hour takedown and the cross-border order, the tools the DSA then generalized. A deadline that short makes human review impossible by design: compliance means automated removal on government demand, and the definition of terrorist content stretches to fit whoever a member state's designated authority answers to.
Our take
Takedown regimes since have been negotiated against TERREG's baseline: if one hour with no judge was acceptable for this category, each new category only has to argue it is comparably bad. The one-hour clock was the precedent; the categories are the variable.
Timeline
- September 12, 2018Proposed by the European Commission
- April 28, 2021Adopted by Parliament at second reading
- June 7, 2022Applied across the EU
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