A new crisis response mechanism for the DSA

EDRi is one of 38 civil society organisations jointly raising our voices to the DSA negotiators to stop negotiating outside their respective mandates and respect the democratic process of the EU. We demand concrete improvements necessary for the Crisis Response Mechanism (CRM) to respect international human rights law and prevent the future abuse of those emergency powers. Add your voice now!

By EDRi · April 12, 2022

EDRi and the undersigned organisations express serious concerns regarding the “crisis response mechanism” in a new Article 27a Digital Services Act (DSA) that has been proposed by the European Commission as part of the closed-door trilogue negotiations.

We are also concerned about the proposal for a new Article 25a DSA that would empower national Digital Services Coordinators (DSCs) to treat smaller online platforms as if they were very large ones in terms of their risk mitigation obligations. This could lead to a much wider application of the problematic and already overly broad measures in Article 27a.

Our statement remains open for new signatures: you can add your civil society organisation’s signature now.

Read the original statement (12.04.2022)

We, the undersigned 38 organisations, call on DSA negotiators to uphold minimum human rights standards and build in checks and balances that prevent abuse when formulating the crisis response mechanism in the DSA:

ApTI Romania
Access Now
ARTICLE 19
Alliance4Europe
Association of European Journalists – Belgian section
Bits of Freedom
Centre for Democracy & Technology, Europe
Office
Centre for Law and Democracy
Civil Liberties Union for Europe (Liberties)
Chaos Computer Club (CCC)
Cultural Broadcasting Archive
Community Media Forum Europe
Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation
Defend Democracy
D3 – Defesa dos Direitos Digitais
Digitale Gesellschaft
Digitalcourage
European Digital Rights (EDRi)
EU DisinfoLab
European Federation of Journalists
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
Fair Vote UK
Gong Croatia
Global Forum for Media Development (GFMD)
Homo Digitalis Greece
Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD)
IT-Pol Denmark
Je Suis Là
Lie Detectors
Media4Democracy
Mnemonic
Open Rights Group
Ossigeno.info
Ranking Digital Rights
SUPERRR Lab
Stiftung Neue Verantwortung (SNV)
The Coalition For Women In Journalism (CFWIJ)
Wikimedia Deutschland
Wikimedia France
Xnet

Please note that this letter was originally published on 12 April 2022 with 15 signatory organisations, and remains open for additional signatures. To add your organisation, please contact Jan Penfrat at <>.

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