EU to impose economic sanctions for Internet censorship

The European Parliament supported a new initiative on fighting against Internet censorship, proposed by the Dutch People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, by majority vote.

According to it, Internet censorship in totalitarian countries can be treated by Europe as a trade barrier. This unusual way can become a very effective one.

The proposal of the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie, VVD) targets the countries that restrict access to the Net for users, the site Generation.by informs.

VVD member Jules Maaten stresses that big American companies like Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft, as well as European Internet companies like Wanadoo, Telecom Italia, and France Telecom have to unwillingly block their services on the territory of states using Internet censorship. In particular, the case is in the Great Chinese Firewall that allows the authorities to block access to certain recourses, and also censor video- and audiocontent.

The proposal of the Dutch Party will soon go the European Council. If it is adopted, any countries found in restricting access to information in Net will have issue of removing Internet censorship raised in trade negotiations.