Nine EU countries support the proposal by Spain, France and Greece to protect children online

Group photo of the participants in the EU Council of Telecommunications Ministers

As many as nine EU countries have given their support to the proposal put forward by Spain, France and Greece to protect children from the risks of the Internet, such as access to pornography. The initiative proposes concrete measures to create a safer and healthier digital environment for children, addressing both technical and educational aspects.

In particular, it calls for mandatory age verification and parental control tools on all Internet-enabled devices available on the European market. It also proposes introducing a European digital age of majority, leaving it open for each Member State to set the age, and recommends requiring age-appropriate web design, minimising addictive and persuasive architectures such as pop-ups, profile personalisation and video autoplay.

"We have seen some really shocking data on the use of pornography by 12 and 13 year olds. Something has to be done. The most important thing is to implement age verification systems at European level. No porn platform is going to tell Europe what to do. As the Nobel laureate Gabriela Mistral said, the future of children is always today. Tomorrow will be too late", argued the Minister for Digital Transformation and Public Function, Óscar López, who recalled the leadership of the President of the Government of Spain, Pedro Sánchez, on this issue during his participation in the Council of Telecommunications Ministers of the European Union.

Spain, France and Greece presented their joint proposal in this forum, which has also been signed by Cyprus, Slovenia and Denmark, which will take over the next rotating presidency of the Council of the EU and which will make the protection of children online one of its priorities. In the course of the debate, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Slovakia and Croatia also gave their support to the initiative.

European age verification pilot

The paper submitted by Spain, France and Greece reports on the development of Digital Wallet Beta as a robust, secure and privacy-friendly age verification solution, fully aligned with eIDAS2.

Spain is already participating with this application in the European pilot launched by the European Commission to provide an age verification tool that serves as a common basis so that each country can adapt it to its national situation. This is intended to encourage all tools to be interoperable with each other and to prevent each country from developing its own national solutions, which are less effective against large platforms.

Verification of the age of majority is one of the uses of the future European digital wallet: the digital identity that all member states will be obliged to provide to their citizens from November 2026, as established by the European eIDAS2 regulation.

The European digital wallet will allow European citizens to identify themselves to public and private administrations and companies, in particular when they require strong authentication (banks, energy companies, etc.) without having to give up their data, as is currently the case when registering with a username and password. With the European digital wallet, it will be much easier to do business with government or companies, but we will also gain sovereignty over our own data, as only the data needed to access a service or benefit will be shared.

Non official translation