Digital technologies as a means of repression and social control
Conclusions314 on Internet Governance similarly stressed the importance of defending human rights from digital repression. The new Action Plan for Human Rights and Democracy agreed in 2020 places much greater emphasis on the digital elements to EU external efforts than any previous policy instrument in this field, alongside the standard range of priorities like support for civil society, political parties, and human rights in multilateral forums. 315 In a recent development, in December 2020, Commissioner Vera Jourova presented the European Democracy Action Plan (EDAP). This is not part of the EU’s external toolbox in the same way as other instruments covered here, as it does not itself entail new funds or diplomatic resources. Yet, it is relevant to this study to the extent that it promises to join together efforts to protect digital rights within the EU with their promotion externally in third countries. The EDAP focuses on three issues: online disinformation, digital attacks on elections, and media pluralism. The EDAP is based on the premise that defending against attacks on elections in the EU and other powers’ use of digital disinformation requires the source of these operations to be targeted within third counties. It points out that this strengthens the need for the EU to support human rights and democratic values internationally. This serves as an important policy reference point for efforts to mitigate digitally-driven authoritarianism globally, even if the EDAP does not in itself (yet) add concrete external funds or foreign policy instruments to the EU toolbox. 316 Moving beyond this brief sketch of the overarching evolution of EU democracy and human rights commitments, the toolbox can be disaggregated into a number of quite distinctive parts. These include various forms of critical pressure; formal dialogues; funding mechanisms; and the EP’s various instruments. The following sections examine their specific relevance to digital challenges.
4.2
Restrictive measures and conditionality
A first group of EU instruments aims to find ways to exert critical leverage over third countries to improve their democratic and human rights norms. These various instruments are about different forms of pressure over third countries. They have general relevance to human rights and democracy, but also more specific features related to the overtly repressive use of digital tools – they are pertinent, in this way, to a select part of the problematic trends described in Chapter 3, although less so to the more subtle forms of social control or advanced AI techniques.
4.2.1
Democracy and Human Rights Sanctions
The EU has increased its use of sanctions in recent years as its focus on economic statecraft has moved up several gears. It had more than 40 sets of restrictive measures in place at the end of the 2010s. 317 These are mostly restrictive measures targeted against individuals; some are country-based, while others are thematic, as described below. Most of its punitive measures have been related to conflict and security concerns, as in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Iran, Mali, Russia, Somalia, South Sudan, Syria and Yemen. Where related to these kinds of conflicts and security concerns, EU restrictive measures are commonly adopted under the umbrella of sanctions agreed in the United Nations. These sanctions are not defined expressly or primarily as human rights or democracy measures, even though in practice they invariably punish human rights abusers involved in violence.
General Secretariat of the Council of the European Union, ‘Council conclusions on internet governance’, 16200/14, 27 November 2014. 315 European Commission and the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, ‘EU Action Plan on Human Rights and Democracy 2020-2024’, JOIN (2020)5, 23 March 2020. 316 Ibid. 317 European Commission, ‘The List of all EU sanctions’. See also S. Raine, ‘Europe’s Strategic Future: From Crisis to Coherence?’, International Institute for Strategic Studies, London, 2019, p. 122. 314
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