H
as Europe finally found the key to protecting its youngest citizens from the harmful effects of digital technology? On July 14, the European Commission unveiled a technical system for age verification and published its first guidelines for enforcing the child protection measures of the Digital Services Act (DSA). The next day, in France, the Conseil d'Etat [France's top administrative court] reinstated the requirement for age checks on pornographic websites, a measure that had been suspended a month earlier under pressure from the platforms. Both were strong signals – steps that could mark a promising turning point. Yet, there remains a long and obstacle-strewn path between these announcements and reality.
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Age verification becomes mandatory on porn sites in the UK, and gradually in France
Since 2019, the need to bring order to the legal chaos of Europe's digital landscape has been on the table. Thierry Breton, then newly appointed as European commissioner for the internal market, put it simply and aptly: "What is illegal offline must also be illegal online." The DSA, passed at the end of 2022, is rooted in this principle: It imposes on major digital platforms a responsibility to identify their own risks, to correct them and to meet their protection obligations – or face enormous fines.
