Irish MEP, Michael McNamara, has said that it would be “fundamentally misguided” of the EU to proceed with a prosecution against Ireland because this country had not complied with EU laws on introducing hate speech laws.
He said that there was “absolutely no evidence” that hate-speech laws worked and the effect of hate speech laws was to the contrary of its stated aim of supressing division and creating social harmony.
“People resent the fact that they’re threatened with prosecution for expressing their views,” the Ireland South MEP said, adding that “increasing proportions of populations across Europe are afraid to express their views, rightly or wrongly”.
“It doesn’t effect how people think in any way, it just effects what they are afraid to say and what they resent,” he said.
Irish people were looking at Britain and seeing elderly people being prosecuted, and seeing “police increasingly tied up with looking at social media postings on the internet instead of making neighbourhoods and communities safer,” the Independent MEP added.
“Hate speech laws are counter-productive. They are also profoundly illiberal. They’ve damaged the UK and we don’t want the same. I asked the European Commission to drop threatened proceedings against Ireland and hate speech laws,” he wrote on X.
He told the European Parliament that it would be “fundamentally misguided” to initiate a prosecution against Ireland because it had not fallen in line with the EU on hate speech, urging the European Commission to revisit the matter.
In a recent communique issued by the European Commission, it said that Ireland (and Finland) was failing in its duties as an EU member state by declining, thus far, to criminalise various forms of “hate speech”:
While Ireland notified some transposition measures in the meantime, the Commission considers that Ireland still fails to transpose the provisions related to criminalising the public incitement to violence or hatred against a group or a member of such group based on certain characteristics, as well as the conducts of condoning, denial, and gross trivialisation of international crimes and the Holocaust….
…. Therefore, the Commission has decided to issue reasoned opinions to Ireland and Finland, which now have two months to respond and take the necessary measures. Otherwise, the Commission may decide to refer the cases to the Court of Justice of the European Union.
A proposed hate speech bill was eventually discarded by the government last year, although it had easily passed through the Dáil, after strong opposition in the Seanad and a public backlash against what was seen as censorship of free speech, concerns which were felt to impact on the double No vote in the March 2024 referendums.
The European Commission may decide to refer the matter to the European Court of Justice.
Earlier this year, the US Vice President, JD Vance, in a landmark speech at the Munich Security conference attended by leading politicians and policymakers, lashed out at what he said was a growing trend of suppression of free speech and freedom of association in Europe – pointing towards censorship of political parties, of Christians, and of peaceful pro-life prayer activists.