On 21 October 2016, the Council of Europe, in cooperation with the local stakeholders held the roundtable on Internet and Human Rights. The event was attended by the representatives of the national Internet service providers as well as the state and civil society sector.   

During the event the CoE experts reviewed the guidelines for the internet service providers focusing on the rights and different types of the responsibilities of the internet service providers and hosting companies while dealing with the authority’s requests to block, filter or remove the specific internet content. The CoE experts praised the results achieved by the CoE and the local beneficiaries while establishing the national internet governance forum, a multi-stakeholder forum enabling all interesting parties to hold the discussions on relevant topics and encouraged the participants to actively participate in similar international or regional events.  Furthermore, the principles of the net neutrality and relevant European and international best standards were also actively discussed by the experts and participants.

The event is organised within the framework of the joint CoE/EU Program “Protecting Internet Freedom through Legislation and Arrangements for Multi-stakeholder Dialogue”. The project was launched in January 2015 and aims to increase the compliance of national legal frameworks and policies with CoE standards on freedom of expression and the knowledge of relevant state authorities about Council of Europe Internet governance and human rights standards and related European Court of Human Rights case-law.