Activities of the Council of Europe in ensuring the human right to information: issues of compliance with the modern challenges of democracy

Abstract

In the article, the authors review and systematize the activities of the Council of Europe in ensuring one of the key factors of liberal democracy – freedom of expression, which is a prerequisite for the implementation of a number of other rights and freedoms. The authors categorize the basic documents, both those that have already become classics and those adopted recently, where this phenomenon has found legal consolidation. It studies the way in which it affects the formation and development of the human right to information in Europe. Attention is drawn to the fact that, with the emergence of new ways of disseminating information, including the potential of the internet first and foremost, the accumulation of information and the European community’s efforts to protect this fundamental democratic right, its further strengthening remains urgent. The Council of Europe has lost control over the observance of the human right to information, and information is used with destructive intent, which poses a danger to one of the fundamental values on the basis of which European society operates today, and raises the risk of the restoration of authoritarianism. First and foremost, there is a threat of authoritarianism in the new democracies of Eastern Europe. The global COVID-19 pandemic and the recession of the world economy, which encourages citizens to choose authoritarian leaders, may be the trigger for slipping into authoritarianism.