The meeting took place within the framework of the European Union’s Internet Forum initiative launched in December 2015. The initiative aims to stop the abuse of the Internet by international terrorist groups.

“I welcome the voluntary initiative of the industry to set up a mechanism to remove terrorist content from the Internet. Today, a prototype of this mechanism is in action,” Commissioner Avramopoulos said in a press release.

Both Abela and Anvelt, as ministers of the current and the upcoming EU Council presidencies, stressed the the wide range of the fight against terrorism in connection with globalization.

“Ongoing cooperation between governments and the private sector can significantly hinder the online activity of terrorist groups,” the two ministers said. “What we are doing today is enhance that cooperation for the benefit of our societies. This is the result of a number of good initiatives by the EU’s Internet Forum, such as consistent removal of online content by implementing modern mechanisms to detect abusive content, and the launch of the Civil Society Empowerment Programme. We now need to make sure that we build on this progress and continue our cooperation with more companies,” they added.

The EU’s counter-terrorism coordinator, Gilles de Kerchove, also took part in Friday’s meeting, along with representatives of Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube.