{"id":425330,"date":"2026-04-30T14:50:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T14:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/425330\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T14:50:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T14:50:09","slug":"european-parliament-backs-campaign-introducing-cocos-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/425330\/","title":{"rendered":"European Parliament backs campaign introducing Coco’s Law"},"content":{"rendered":"

The European Parliament has formally backed a campaign to introduce the Irish anti-cyber bullying Coco’s Law across the EU.<\/p>\n

MEPs voted by a show of hands to support the campaign in Strasbourg this afternoon, saying it is needed to protect young people from online abuse.<\/p>\n

Coco’s Law – officially called the Harassment, Harmful Communications and Related Offences Act – was introduced in Ireland in 2020 in response to the tragic death by suicide of 21-year-old Nicole ‘Coco’ Fox in 2018 after a sustained cyberbullying campaign against her.<\/p>\n

In the intervening years the law has helped protect other young people, while Coco’s mother Jackie has campaigned for it to be replicated in other countries.<\/p>\n

After listening to Jackie’s concerns at last month’s European Parliament session in Strasbourg, this week Swedish European People’s Party MEP Tomas Tobe tabled a resolution for the law to be adopted across the EU.<\/p>\n

\"Jackie
\nCoco’s mother Jackie has campaigned for the law to be replicated in other countries<\/p>\n

That resolution was backed by MEPs today, meaning the request will now be formally sent to the European Commission which is the body responsible for formally proposing legislation.<\/p>\n

The planned EU-wide law aims to criminalise online bullying, as well as defining the offence in the same way across all EU member states, including carrying the same penalties.<\/p>\n

Irish MEPs, all of whom met Jackie last month, support the campaign, as well as a majority of MEPs across the EU.<\/p>\n

However, a number of right-wing parties oppose it, arguing the law would impact on free speech and limit online debate among adults.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The European Parliament has formally backed a campaign to introduce the Irish anti-cyber bullying Coco’s Law across the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":425331,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-425330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=425330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425330\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/425331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=425330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=425330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=425330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}