Polish Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights

Liberty

VIA IURIS

Nederlands Juristen Comité voor de Mensenrechten

Society for Civil Rights

Bulgarian Helsinki Committee

Centre for Peace Studies - Croatia

The Association for the Defense of Human Rights in Romania – the Helsinki Committee

Belgian League of Human Rights

Civil Rights Defenders

Hungarian Civil Liberties Union

Estonian Human Rights Centre

VoxPublic

Italian Coalition for Civil Liberties and Rights

Rights International Spain

The Peace Institute – Institute for Contemporary Social and Political Studies

The Irish Council for Civil Liberties

Associazione Antigone

Human Rights Monitoring Institute

The League of Human Rights

The primary purpose of the DSA is to check the power of Big Tech and make the internet a safer place for everyday users, claim Liberties' Eva Simon and Jonathan Day in their opinion piece in EurActiv.

In its report, the Berlin-based Civil Liberties Union for Europe said that countries such as Hungary, Poland or Slovenia had used the pandemic to strengthen their hold on power and limit criticism of the government.

A new report from the Civil Liberties Union for Europe, based in Germany, suggests that the pandemic has played an important part in weakening democracy across the continent.

“Beyond being a distraction from the task of vaccination, the pass could end up creating a two-tier society,” Israel Butler of the Civil Liberties Union for Europe, a human rights watchdog, said about the EU Commission's vaccine pass plan.

“The recommendation is a good start, but the Commission should go further and implement concrete safeguards into EU law, similar to what it intends to do as a means to counter strategic lawsuits against journalists,” Eva Simon, senior advocacy officer at the Civil Liberties Union For Europe, said in a statement.

“Real-time bidding, which is the bedrock of the online advertising industry, is an abuse of people’s right to privacy,” said Dr Orsolya Reich, senior advocacy officer at Liberties.