Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection Ordinary meeting
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IMCO European Parliament
Follow its sittingsAnna Cavazzini
It reduces administrative and regulatory barriers affecting both defence procurement and the transfer of defence-related products within the EU. It introduces new general transfer licenses, making cross-border cooperation easier and less burdensome for companies operating across Member States. It increases transparency and predictability by requiring Member States to publish these licenses. It modernises procurement rules and rises the threshold for their application, helping procedures become more proportionate and efficient. It provides Member States with greater flexibility when conducting occasional joint procurement projects, facilitating practical cooperation where it is most needed.
In addition, Parliament and Council have agreed on a joint statement looking ahead to further measures that may be needed in the future. Among other elements, the statement refers to: possible additional steps to strengthen intra-EU transfers of defence-related products; consideration of EU eligibility criteria in defence procurement; support for efforts to increase Europe's defence capabilities by 2030. And more broadly, the agreement reflects our shared ambition to strengthen the European defence technological and industrial base, support SMEs, reduce procurement bottlenecks and improve access to defence supply chains across the Union.
This is a balanced and forward-looking agreement that will help Member States and industry cooperate more effectively, while contributing to a stronger and more resilient European defense framework. I would like to highlight that regional agreement was crucial in order to secure progress for the whole defense omnibus package. The Parliament was more ambitious than the Council, but with a mutually agreed joint statement, we also tasked the Commission to come up with further proposals for these objectives, as both co-legislators recognize that further efforts are required to reach defense readiness by 2030. So these were the words of our rapporteur Anna-Maja Henriksson, and also of course congratulations to her that the agreement was reached in this important file. And now we come to agenda item eight.
I just saw Andreas and... yeah. Normally it is a reporting back from the working group on the Digital Markets Act, and we need Andreas Schwab. But if not Andreas, that I just saw slipped out, we can start first with the working group on the DSA with Christel Schaldemose.
Christel Schaldemose
Thank you very much. Yes, I'm here. And we had yesterday the DSA working group, and we had a very good meeting. We received an extensive update from Deputy Director-General Renate Nikolay. She's in here today.
Thank you very much for yesterday. She gave us a very deep knowledge about the DSA enforcement in terms of both the general DSA enforcement, the interaction between the DSA and AI Act, and we talked also about the EU-US cooperation on digital policies. Those topics were chosen by the members of the working group, and I think it's important that we all of us give, you know, indication of what we find important to talk about in the working group. On the enforcement, we discussed the fines imposed on X and Temu, and we also talked about the investigations on other platforms. And since it was in camera, I cannot tell you about the details, but it's important for us to have this knowledge about what is going on, and we can ask about different aspects of the investigations, and we are getting good answers.
But we were discussing also Romanian elections, ongoing infringement cases, and the potential implications of the recent court case law on safe harbor liability exemptions. And then we were also discussing, of course, the focus on protection of protecting minors online. We are having a hearing right now on the, very soon on this here in the committee today. And also the link between the work of the DSA and the ongoing panel of experts. So that was also very important.
We also discussed the DFA. So on artificial intelligence, the Commission confirmed that it is currently assessing how large AI systems interact with DSA framework. This is a key question. We will get back to this. It's still not completely decided, but there's no doubt that we will have to follow up on these aspects.
And finally, on the transatlantic cooperation, the Commission emphasized the dialogue with the United States remain important. It is, but it's also important for us and also for the Commission to make sure that the laws we're making in EU are complied when you're doing business in EU. But I think we had a very good discussion on this as well. So my overall impression is that the enforcement of the DSA is progressing quite well.
However, there are issues we need to tackle and one of the things I'd like to address here today is the question of resources. There are still areas where the Commission have difficulties to dig into parts of the DSA because it is timely, it costs a lot of time, manpower, and I think that we will have to look into that and see if there is any way where we can push for more resources. One of the ideas behind making the Commission responsible for enforcement of the DSA for the very large online platforms was exactly to have, you know, to coordinate but also to pull the resources. And yet the resources are still not enough. So this is a topic I think we have to address at a certain time, dear chair.
I don't know how we have to do it, but also when we add the general DSA enforcement with the fact that we might get some of the chatbots also being designated as very large online VLOPs or VLOs, then I think we have to look into this because it must not be a question of lack of resources that is the question of whether we're able to enforce the law or not. But I would like to thank the colleagues for participating and I have said it before, chair, but I do believe that these working groups are a very important tool for the Parliament in order to follow a legislation and also be helpful for the Commission, but also do our job as watchdogs and make sure that put a pressure on the fact that we need a strong and good enforcement. Thank you.
Yeah, thank you very much. Now we come to jump back to point eight, the reporting back from the working group on the DMA. And I give the floor to Andreas Schwab and also there was an agreement last night on the e-declaration and probably you can also report back from that trilogue.
Andreas Schwab
Yeah, very good. Maybe I start with the agreement on the e-declaration that has been happening yesterday evening. We had together with the employment committee and my colleague Johan Danielsson from Sweden tried to defend the position of the European Parliament on this. And we had a trilogue that lasted much longer than foreseen. We had only four outstanding points.
In the end, the Council was resisting any sort of way of making this law a law with a delegated or implementing act. And why this? Because there are member states, not all, but there are member states that are so stubborn to just defend their national traditions of quite unsuccessful controlling mechanisms that they wanted just to put the list full of their own data points and then say but they cannot be changed. And I can tell you that I'm still frustrated about that. It was not a good evening for the cooperation in the European Union.
It was not a good evening for trying to make our system more efficient and also better because if member states complain so much about the fact that they are in difficulties to control workforce, it means that there is a problem, but they are not ready to fix that and to improve or to work on it. That has been quite disturbing. What we have been achieving is that all member states participate and that makes however now the system a bit more complex.
And so I leave it to your assessment if we should have better started with a tool only for a few member states because the tool is anyhow voluntary. The Commission has been criticized for this to propose a voluntary system, but with a mandatory system mostly likely the discussion with member states would have even been worse. And therefore the the mistrust between the member states themselves, but also the mistrust between the Council on the one side and the European Commission and the European Parliament on the other side in the area of DG EMPL is is very difficult to understand because with this solution it's hard to believe that the improvement will come quickly. And that's bad for the controls, for those that work in controls, that's bad for the companies and it's also bad for the workers. So it's just a way of defending your turf, but that was a bit what I wanted to report to you.
We have now concluded that even if there is no delegated act, we should start this system that brings together 27 national systems into one platform so that those companies that want to start at zero they will have an advantage because it's one digital system where you can fill in a lot of data once from your company and then you have only to integrate the data of the worker that you want to post. But it has been a bizarre meeting somehow. Thank you very much. And then I can come to the DMA working group which was much more interesting because we have been inviting other authorities from with similar laws. The European Union has been with the DMA and the DSA the frontrunner on these tools, but we have been seeing plenty of other countries in the world taking the suite and follow up.
And we were therefore joined by important decision maker from the from the British authority, the CMA. We had a colleague from Australia from the authority there and we had a member of the Japanese embassy here who was reporting about the Japanese way of implementing their rules. What we have been observed in the exchange with these other three authorities, the European Commission was also present and reported, is that the European Union has a very strong but also quite flexible approach which has been able to give us a tool that is stronger, we don't know yet if it's more efficient, but stronger than what have other legislators. The Japanese have a more stable, a more structured tool which makes it a bit more difficult to act on all the changes in digital markets that happen. The Brits have a very flexible tool, but it lacks a bit the basic principles inside, so it's difficult for the authority to to hit strongly because they can only follow and then flexibly ask for changes.
So I think we we found that the European model isn't that bad so far and it's quite efficient. However we have discussed also again about the fact that the enforcement is not as we have expected and even as it's written in the law because by April the European Commission should have come with decisions that we are still waiting for, probably they will come in July. And like that we had an interesting exchange with our colleagues from other from other jurisdictions and I I think it was also for those members that attended quite interesting. Thank you very much.
Anna Cavazzini
Yeah, thank you very much. Yeah, and also from the little bit more frustrating reporting back from the trilogue, but again a lot of member states don't want to have more single market integration at the end, that was probably not the proof although they talk about it a lot.
We have one last reporting back, that was the IMCO mission to Martinique from the 25th to 29th of May, where the head of delegation was Nikola Minchev, our Vice-Chair, but he cannot be here today, so he asked me to report back, and I read out his words. So, dear colleagues, from the 25th to 29th of May, the IMCO delegation visited Martinique with the objective to better understand how the single market works in one of the EU's outermost regions and what possible EU measures could help to ensure fair prices, strong consumer protection and better market access. During the mission, the delegation met a wide range of stakeholders, representatives of the government and local authorities, consumer organisations, business associations, local producers and businesses, e-commerce actors and customs officials. These exchanges provided a valuable reality check on how EU legislation is experienced on the ground. While Martinique is fully part of the EU and the single market, it faces challenges that are very different from those experienced in continental Europe due to its remoteness and the complexities of trading with neighbouring Caribbean countries.
Distance, small market size and dependence on imports have a direct impact on prices, competition and consumer choice. One issue that was repeatedly raised was the high cost of living. The price gap between mainland France and the island is particularly challenging for consumers. As highlighted in the meetings, the shipping costs can account for between 50% and 75% of the value of a basket of goods, resulting in significantly higher prices for many everyday products. At the same time, the positive impact of EU support plays a crucial role in developing infrastructure, strengthening economic resilience and creating opportunities for local business and consumers.
In this regard, local stakeholders stressed the POSEI programme, a Union initiative designed to support agriculture and food supply in the EU's outermost regions to counterbalance geographic and economic disadvantages. The delegation also gained important insights into customs procedures, market surveillance and the practical implementation of EU rules. The experiences and concerns shared with members will be highly relevant for IMCO's future work, including on the multiannual financial framework, public procurement and customs modernisation. Above all, they remind us that the single market must deliver for all Europeans regardless of where they live and that EU policy-making must take into account the specific realities of our outermost regions. And this requires continuous dialogue between EU institutions and stakeholders on the ground to ensure effective responses to local challenges and opportunities.
Finally, Nikola, the head of delegation, would like to thank all colleagues for their active participation, as well as the IMCO Secretariat and the staff of the political groups for the excellent organisation, cooperation and positive spirit throughout the mission. So, that concludes our reporting back. We had a lot today, I'm sorry for that, but now we come to our agenda item 11, our public hearing on protection of minors online in the single market, that builds on the work that this committee has done in the last years, especially on the DSA and the own-initiative report that Christel Schaldemose was negotiating. And of course, we all know the problem is very high. The discussions are gaining ground in a lot of Member States, so I think it's very good that we have another public hearing on the different challenges, but also solutions that we in the European Parliament can put forward when it comes to protecting our minors online in the single market.
So I welcome all the speakers, of course. Thanks so much for your time and that you came here, that you are enlightening us with your insights. And of course, I thank also all the members and the Secretariat who organised the hearing.
So we start with the first panel. It's called effective implementation and enforcement of existing EU legislation for the protection of minors online. And here we start with the Commission and you have like more or less seven minutes each, all of you. So probably you can try to stick to the time so that we don't run over time. And we start with Renate Nikolay, Deputy Director General of DG Connect.
Welcome.
Renate Nikolay
Thank you chair, good morning everybody and thank you for giving us the opportunity to give us give you an update on where we are on effective implementation. Let me maybe first start because it is still very topical because you also mentioned that on the DMA you had kind of international partners that also on minor protection online we are seeing more and more an international convergence on the topic. I just want to highlight that the recent G7 digital ministers meeting came under the French leadership to a quite important declaration on seven principles for minor protection online and they are remarkable because of course when you read them they are quite kind of inspired by our risk-based approach that we have in the DSA. We started our kind of two and a half years journey of effective implementation of the DSA in the first phase I would say with making clear what we expect from the DSA, very high level of level of protection of minors online. This is in particular Article 28 of the DSA that prescribes a very high level of protection of safety, privacy and security of minors and we developed the guidelines that were issued pretty much a year ago.
And they are still an important kind of background for us also for our enforcement work. But since then we have advanced quite considerably on our enforcement work. Let me highlight the three most advanced enforcement actions with preliminary findings which is already quite an important decisive step because we already find that preliminary the platforms are in breach of the rules that in particular relates to the pornographic platforms where we found them preliminary in violation of the rules because they are not having an effective age verification system even so they say that on their platforms it's adult content and and of course then they need to verify the age but in reality they verify the age by self-declaration. So this is not a very effective system. We also have preliminary findings in the context of addictive design, that's our TikTok case.
That's very important because it really builds also on what we have said in the guidelines and we are kind of in that kind of preliminary findings of course taking issues with the infinite scroll, with the kind of the business models where there are no mandatory curfews, where there is not kind of enough disruption to actually you know keep the the minors safe from addictive design features. And then we have more recently the preliminary findings in the Meta case and there it's about you know the access to the service where Meta itself says that the minors should it should only be used the service for kids not below 13. But then in reality we see that more around 8 million kids under 13 regularly use Instagram and Facebook and that's more than 10% of younger children of our younger children. And it's also clear that the the Meta services are not designed for these young kids. So that means that when they are coming under that age to the service they can be exposed to issues such as cyberbullying, grooming or age inappropriate experiences.
And so in our preliminary conclusion we kind of you know said that Meta's preventive measures are not good enough because minors under 13 can easily enter a false birth date and they are no effective controls and the ways of reporting underage users are difficult and ineffective.
So of course, when we are having done preliminary findings, that means the right of defense comes in, then the platforms with their kind of legal support of course can kind of, you know, come in and explain their views. But these cases will of course advance and might also come in a later stage if no solution is found to a non-compliance decision. You have remarked that also in the meantime we have had two non-compliance decisions, one regarding X in December last year and one regarding Temu in May this year. We have also opened new kind of, you know, proceedings regarding minor protection online. Let me just mention the X case that we of course, you know, dealt with when we had the Croc experience, when we had the digitally, the kind of the feature that they offered where users can actually digitally undress women, create child sexual abuse material.
We have of course dealt with that also in the AI Omnibus. We have it now added to our prohibited kind of, you know, practices, but nevertheless the Croc case was an important statement and is ongoing. We are also investigating Shein, so an online marketplace, over the sale of child-like sex dolls. That was also an important aspect that is related to minor protection online. And we opened proceedings against Snapchat.
And here it's an important new aspect because here it's really about the grooming activity, because there we really kind of, you know, have evidence that there is grooming ongoing on Snapchat to recruit for criminal purposes, but also that, you know, teens are getting in contact with prohibited products such as drugs, vapes, or alcohol. And we are also examining the app stores, because we also want to look at the app stores and look critically about their age assurance, their age ratings, and the availability of nudity-fication apps. So this is the kind of the context. We are also having the ongoing cases regarding TikTok and Meta when it comes to the account settings and also when it comes to the rabbit holes. So also there you will see that we will continue with our pipeline of cases that we have now pretty much established and where I think it's fair to say that over the last months you could pretty much see that every month we came with a kind of decisive step in one of our proceedings.
And I can reassure you that we are also planning to kind of continue with that speed and with that determination. Let me just for completeness, because of course Hubert will kind of, you know, deliver on the consumer acquis, but let me just mention because it's important in this context also of the regulatory framework on minor protection online, speak about the AVMSD, the Audiovisual Services Directive for a moment, because we are also in the process of revising that. The AVMSD is important when we're looking at minor protection online because it's our only content law. It's the only law where we actually have rules at the European level where we say this is content that we don't want teenagers to be exposed to. But it's a little bit outdated because it really kind of comes more from the time of linear TV and we really need to kind of bring it up to speed when it comes to today's online harms for kids and minors.
And that's why, you know, in our ongoing revision of the AVMSD review, we also want to update these online harms content-wise in the in the kind of the context of the AVMSD. So this is to say our toolbox is pretty broad. We are of course also kind of showing that it has impact. We are also seeing that the platforms have of course now designed features that would not be there without the DSA. So features where you can have the default settings for privacy, you can kind of, you know, as a parent have better control tools, but it's far from being perfect.
And that's why we are also of course looking very much ahead at the expert panel recommendation and also the follow-up work and are working in concert with other services in the in the Commission to have then a very complete and holistic approach building also on the very important work that you have done with your own initiative report on minor protection online. Thank you very much.
As you said, we pass on now to Hubert Gambs, Deputy Director General for Digital Transformation, Justice and Consumers. And I mean, the panel, the expert panel was mentioned. I mean, probably you can already say if you have any specific expectations or more information on what will come out, but you don't have to. Floor's yours.
Thank you so much, Renate, for being here and thanks for your intervention.
Hubert Gambs
Thank you, Chair, and good morning everybody. As Renate has outlined, this is a horizontal priority, the protection of of minors online for the Commission as a whole. And we are putting all instruments that are at our disposal into action. And with the Digital Services Act, as discussed by Renate, being a very powerful tool for ensuring that online platforms deploy meaningful safeguards for minors. When it comes to the protection of children as consumers, the European Union already has one of the strongest consumer protection frameworks in the world.
And EU consumer law applies online also and recognizes minors as vulnerable consumers. For example, the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive regulates misleading or aggressive practices in general and strictly prohibits the direct exhortation to children to buy advertised products or persuade their parents or other adults to buy advertised products for them. Member States are actively enforcing those rules, including with the coordination of the Commission in the Consumer Protection Cooperation Network. And I will come to that. One example for our activity there is that last year the Commission published the CPC Network's common position that was addressed to an online gaming company, Star Stable Entertainment, and that was urging them to refrain from this direct exhortation to children in their advertisements, pressuring techniques to unduly influence children to purchase in-game virtual currency or in-game content.
It also highlighted a lack of clear and transparent information adapted to children and a failure by the company to ensure that the influencers promoting their products clearly disclose commercial content and do not unduly influence children with their marketing techniques. We are in contact with the company, of course, to ensure that it changes its behavior and we are monitoring it. And of course, if no satisfactory result can be achieved, then it would be for the national authorities to follow up with decisions prohibiting and possibly also fining the company. At the same time, the Commission has also published the CPC key principles on in-game virtual currencies. This is to promote transparency and fairness for children, in particular for children.
And we are monitoring also the implementation of these principles in practice. We are working to strengthen the enforcement of the existing EU consumer law and therefore preparing a revision of the Consumer Protection Cooperation, the CPC Regulation, before the end of this year to make enforcement under the CPC Regulation faster and also more deterrent for companies that are active in the single market. We are also exploring whether the role of the Commission should be strengthened and we are of course inspired by the activities on the enforcement of the DSA in in in big cases. The enforcement is of course one side of the coin. Making sure that our substantive consumer protection rules remain fit for purpose is the other.
And the role of consumer law is to provide a horizontal safety net to protection covering all types of traders, e-commerce websites, subscription-based streaming and digital content services, video games and also apps. And in 2024 we did the digital fairness fitness check and it showed that more has to be done to ensure that this safety net is up to date to protect consumers, including children online. The fitness check pointed to legal gaps, unclarity or fragmentation with regard to problematic practices such as dark patterns, addictive design and spending maximizing features. These are examples are infinite scroll or loot boxes. There are also issues with unfair personalization and problematic influencer marketing.
And these are exactly the practices that reach children most directly and the harm resulting from such practices is often higher among younger age groups. So ensuring that our children are protected online is a commitment that the Parliament and the Commission share. And we are looking very much forward also of course to the 13th of July to the recommendations of the special panel on child safety online. And this will certainly also help us to shape a comprehensive European response. And consumer law will have to play a key role in this response and I will be happy to share in the next panel then in greater detail how we intend to address the remaining gaps through the Digital Fairness Act.
Thank you.
Excellent. Thank you so much, also for clearly distinguishing now the existing and the gaps in the second panel. I think that's good that we keep it that way. So we now come to one of our guest speakers. I welcome from Meta, Ms. Tara Hopkins, Global Director Public Policy from Instagram.
Welcome.
Tara Hopkins
Thank you so much. It's really good to be here. It's great to be back in the European Parliament because I started my career here 25 years ago, so it is aging me to be back here. I'm going to spend the bulk of my remarks addressing how we approach risk, what we have learned and how we have built teen accounts based on that learning and where I think we can all be doing more to understand age. I wanted to start on a slightly more positive note before we jump into the risks around keeping young people safe when they're using online platforms and that is the important role of digital services for young Europeans and for teenagers.
Giving voice to underrepresented communities, connecting through shared cultural moments, we're all following the World Cup right now, building communities, starting small businesses, even older teens are starting small businesses and sharing in fun. Last week I met a science teacher who is using YouTube and Instagram to teach STEM through rap. That's just one example. I wish I'd had that when I was a teenager. I'm not deflecting from the risks here, but it's just really important that we consider the value that teens derive from being online as well as how we mitigate the risks around that and really to avoid a debate that becomes too binary.
At Meta we have over 3 million people using our family of apps. That's billions of pieces of content posted every day. And we know we have a responsibility to ensure that our platforms are safe for all of our users, especially teenagers. Our approach is three-pronged: prevention, empowerment and support and collaboration. So we focus on preventing harms by enforcing policies, some of which are zero tolerance policies and developing cutting-edge tools.
We introduced teen accounts on Instagram and Facebook and Messenger. This is now available across the entire of the EU as well as globally to provide enhanced protections to hundreds of millions of teens globally.
Empowerment and support is how we make it easy to report potential harms and building parental supervision tools that parents can actually use that are easy for them to find and allows parents to monitor the time their teens are spending online, see who their teens are interacting with and set daily limits. The role of parents here is really crucial. And then collaboration, we collaborate with global experts, NGOs, law enforcement and our policies are guided by that research and direct feedback from parents and from teens themselves. Teen accounts is at the forefront of our approach. It automatically provides enhanced protections by default.
Safety has been a priority for us for for two decades, but we were hearing from parents how complicated it felt for them to understand the tools and the features. With teen accounts what we did was we simplified, we strengthened with more defaults and we differentiated between a younger and older teens. So teens who are under the age of 16 cannot turn any of these protection to less restrictive without a parent approving it. And then for older teens we give them a little bit more autonomy, again based on on parental feedback. I'm a I'm a mom myself, I've got a 16-year-old and a 14-year-old and I know very much the difference between how I guide my daughter at the age of 16 versus my son who when he first started gaming and things like that when he was 13.
So in teen accounts we have private account by default, you can't change this without parental permission. Teens have to accept new followers, people can't follow them or see any of their content. And they can't contact them. Messaging is restricted. We have the strictest settings for content and recommendations and parents can limit that even further.
We have time limits, we've got notifications at 60 minutes by default but also really importantly we've got sleep mode, which I think every researcher we ever spoke to and every expert we ever spoke to while no one can agree exactly the amount of time that's the right amount of time to spend on on on platforms, we all agreed that sleep is incredibly important for teens. So we have no notifications at night and this is turned on by default. We also have recommendation reset, so everyone including teens can clear their recommendations and start afresh. We now have hundreds of millions of teens across the world who are in the Instagram and Facebook teen account experience and 98% of teens have stayed in these most protective settings. I want to spend just a couple of moments on content specifically because we introduced content restrictions on teen accounts on Instagram and Facebook, which is akin to an age-appropriate movie.
We automatically place all under-18s into this plus-13 content restriction. Again they can't opt out without the parent's permission. Why we did this was because again talking to parents they were confused about what is age-appropriate, what is age-gating. We really wanted to speak the language of parents. So we invited thousands of them worldwide to share their feedback with us to help us align on their expectations.
We reviewed all of our policies including our recommendation policies of what a teen can search for and even what a teen can send in their DMs. I'm not comparing apples to apples here, being on Instagram or another
Excuse me, could you speak a tiny little bit slower because we get feedback from the translators that it's they cannot translate.
Tara Hopkins
Of course, of course. So we're not comparing apples to apples here. Being on Instagram is very different from being watching a movie. But what we're trying to do is speak the mental model of something a parent who's probably in their 40s or 50s will understand as movie ratings. We found in some instances that our policies went further than what would be expected of a movie over the age of 13.
So for instance we don't allow any kind of nudity on our platform whereas you can have some nudity on a plus-13 movie if it's within the arc of of a story. What we did though was look at all of our policies and check what we what where we were aligned with what would be expected of a of a movie over the age of 13. So we proactively hide and do not recommend mature content that features strong language, risky stunts or harmful behavior. Teens are blocked from seeing results in the explore for any kind of mature terms such as alcohol or gore with technology in place to catch misspelling of these terms. We've also updated our AI experiences for teens.
And you can limit the content settings even further. So for families who wish to, they can limit that even further and this is particularly important for younger teens when they first join our platforms. So what's next? We will continue to expand the features we have in teen accounts. Last year we announced that we have had brought in that you can't go live on Instagram if you're under the age of 18.
That's now within the teen account experience. But every proposal from content restrictions to outright bans depends on one fundamental and foundational question, which is how do you reliably know someone's age online? We believe we have a robust approach to age assurance and have had for many years. And we continue to invest in age technology. Most recently here in the EU we have launched our advanced AI technology to find teens who may have lied about their age when they first joined Instagram.
Our precision is getting better and better as this is rolled out. And we then move teens who we believe are teens and maybe not in their twenties as they may have told us when they first joined Instagram, we move them into our most protective settings similar to the teen account experience. This committee in the report from 2025 recognized the fragmented approach across the EU and the fragmentation of the internal market. We hope to see this addressed in the expert group conclusions later on this summer. And finally, on top of our age assurance measures, we are proposing that there should be app store or operating level systems that are required to verify age and obtain parental approval once, one system, one standard, privacy preserving and parental authority preserved.
Also this isn't theoretical, it's already happening in Brazil where they've brought it in and in Texas where Apple is now making sure that teens have to have their downloads approved by their parents. I will just conclude by saying that a level playing field is incredibly important. Teens are using up to 40 apps on their phones or on their iPads. In Australia the ban that came in was limited to a certain number of apps at a certain moment in time, the result of which is teens are bypassing these inconsistent checks and migrating to unmonitored apps and gaming platforms. I don't think that's what anyone wants to see, particularly parents.
Every app should be... Thank you so much. I warned you like two times, your time is over by long. Okay. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Sorry, I don't want to be rude, but I think you didn't see my signs. I'm sorry. Okay. Thank you so much for your intervention.
We come now to our next intervention by Mr. Urs Buscke from BEUC, the European Consumer Organisation. He is senior legal officer.
Urs Buscke
Madam Chair, honorable members, thank you very much for inviting the European Consumer Organisation BEUC to this hearing today. For those of you who don't know us, BEUC is the largest organisation promoting the general interest of European consumers. Founded in 1962, we are representing more than 40 independent national consumer organisations from over 30 European countries today. As we see today and heard already today, the EU has already done a lot to protect children online. And in this regard, of course, the Digital Services Act is of particular importance.
BEUC welcomes the European Commission's strong efforts to use the full potential of the Digital Services Act to improve the protection of children online, both on social media and on online marketplaces. In this regard I would like to highlight two recent examples, namely the cases against TikTok and Temu.
In its preliminary finding in the TikTok case that was adopted in February this year, the Commission found that the company is not doing enough to address the risks caused by addictive design, as we have already heard this morning. And it's promising to see that the Commission went as far as asking TikTok to change the basic design of its service. And there's another important positive aspect of these findings, which is that the Commission acknowledged that addictive design is not only affecting children, but also adult users of the platform. In the case against Temu, the Commission imposed fines against the company in May this year, based on the DSA, among others for failing to properly assess the risks caused by unsafe products, including products for children. Already in May 2024, so more than two years ago, BEUC had launched a complaint against Temu for suspected breaches of the Digital Services Act.
Our complaint covered many aspects, for instance the protection of minors, traceability of traders, manipulative practices, compliance by design, and the transparency of recommender systems. Our complaint was supported by extensive evidence collected by our members, showing the presence of unsafe and illegal products on the platform. And our members continue to collect evidence. For instance, in October 2025, BEUC members from Denmark, France, and Germany tested toys, jewelry, and electronics available on Temu, and for instance 96% of the tested toys were found to be unsafe. 96%.
However, several aspects of our complaint are still under investigation. We therefore call on the Commission to finalize these investigations to ensure that Temu fully complies with the law. However, unfortunately, there are more examples of potential breaches of the DSA in the area of online child protection. On Monday this week, our German member, VZBV, published a report about the compliance of five very large online platforms with the Commission's guidelines on Article 28 DSA on the protection of minors. The report covers a broad range of topics addressed in the Commission guidelines, such as dark patterns and addictive design, in-app purchases, personalized advertising, recommender systems, and account settings.
According to this report, none of the five VLOPs fully complies with the obligations set out in the DSA guidelines. But if we are serious about the protection of minors, we also need to look beyond platforms, because as we all know, children are facing risks across the digital environment. Dark patterns, addictive design, surveillance-based advertising, gambling-like features, for example, they are not limited to online intermediaries as defined by the DSA, as we all do know by now. The only law that applies across all sectors, which was already pointed out this morning, and can thus be used to address these practices, is horizontal EU consumer law, in particular the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive. However, as was already mentioned, the results of the Digital Fairness Fitness Check concluded by the Commission in October 2024 have clearly shown that we need to update EU consumer law to increase the protection for consumers of all ages.
We therefore support an ambitious Digital Fairness Act, also because we are convinced that the best way to improve the protection of children as young consumers is to increase the protection for all consumers. But even with an ambitious Digital Fairness Act, there will be little difference for consumers if authorities will not be able to enforce it swiftly and effectively where necessary. We therefore also need an ambitious revision of the CPC Regulation. As some of you may know, BEUC has a specific role within the CPC system.
Like a few other entities, we are entitled to submit so-called external alerts to inform the CPC network about suspected breaches of EU consumer law. Since 2020, we have done so more than 10 times. This makes us not only contributors, but also long-standing observers of how the system works in practice. And the experience tells us clearly: the CPC framework needs to be improved. Firstly, because the system is too slow.
Coordinated CPC actions take around 18 months on average, and we have submitted complaints that took even longer to be processed by the CPC network. In a digital single market where breaches of EU consumer law can affect millions of people, such delays are hard to justify. And the second reason why the system needs to be improved is because it's absolutely not deterrent. The current system is built on dialogue between authorities and companies. And these dialogues have so far only led to commitments from companies to comply with the law.
But fines, fines have never been imposed at EU level. If companies know that the only thing they have to face when breaching consumer law are long dialogues that never result in fines but only in commitments to comply with the law, then in our opinion, companies have little to no incentive to be compliant with the law in the first place. This urgently needs to be changed to ensure that consumer law enforcement can better contribute to the protection of our children online, but of course also offline. Thank you very much.
Thank you so much. And now we come to the last speaker. I welcome Mr. Christian Sirigiri, Director of the Online Expression and Civic Space Program, CDT Europe. Welcome.
Christian Cirhigiri
Thank you very much, Madam Chair, honorable members. Thank you for inviting us to this public hearing this morning. I'm representing CDT Europe, which is a non-profit that has been advocating for several years for the promotion and protection of democracy and human rights in European tech law and policy. My remarks are also going to build on what has already been shared by predecessors, but I wanted to just start by reiterating that the DSA has given us several tools in which to address the protection of minors online. The Article 28 guidelines were consulted extensively with civil society organizations and youth groups, and include some welcome recommendations and best practices to advance safety by design that is also informed by young people, and that's very important to mention.
We also have the risk mitigation framework, which requires regular assessment and remedy to these risks. Unfortunately, as has already been mentioned by my colleague from BEUC, none of the platforms have been complying to a high standard of these requirements. But however, we do believe that stronger enforcement of these provisions will result in better compliance. It's also important to note that as the age assurance debate is probably the most top debate in this moment when you talk about protection of minors online, we also think that the term age assurance itself refers to a broad range of tools. We have a significant concerns about the privacy and equity implications of hard verification tools being considered across the EU that require the use of an ID.
We do understand that the EU has taken significant measures to taking into account some of the concerns that have been raised, including taking into account that the EU ID wallet is protecting data, that it verifies certificate, and that it does not allow third-party access.
However, as has already been evidenced by the work of public interest technologists, the app sadly failed in terms of safety and breakability. The cybersecurity concerns are still therefore evident, while the privacy and equity concerns however still remain unaddressed. In light of the very recent announcement by the UK government a few days ago, we're also equally concerned about the growing political move to introduce age restrictions for certain platforms. We fully do appreciate the concerns behind these decisions, but as echoed by multiple civil society organizations, including children's rights organizations and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, banning young people from online spaces is a violation of their rights to access information and free expression that is also preserved by the UN Charter. It also shifts the onus of the harms they face from the platforms to young people and desensitizes, if you may, companies to comply with the obligations under the DSA and to ensure that their services are safe by design.
We're also reminded that the driving force behind these discussions is the recognition that users are having unsafe experiences on these platforms and that certain groups other than children, as also mentioned by my colleague from BEUC, are particularly vulnerable to these harms. Strong enforcement to ensure that these services are inherently safe for all would also work to address the concerns in regards to minors as well as documented broader democratic societal impacts. I would like also to come to one of the points that was raised by our colleague from Instagram about parental control. We do believe that over-reliance on parental guidance and control alone is not a catch-all solution. For this precise reason, we at CDT Europe have been advocating for design-based approaches, safety by design, safety by default, and the fact that we have a legislation, the DSA and Article 28 guidelines, that needs to be enforced to ensure that platforms are held accountable for their harmful design rather than the onus being placed entirely on users to mitigate risk and children being penalized and their rights being restricted.
On that note, we believe that it is important to center this debate on the rights of minors, on the rights of children. I'd like maybe to wrap up my remark by landing on some best practices that we believe are worth paying attention to. Users want greater control over the tools that they interact with, and the DSA mandates this, but platforms have yet to adequately comply with these obligations. Prescriptive approaches are not going to be appropriate for some setting and families. Children are using these services to access communities, and blunt measures won't be effective in the long run.
If the EU is going to embrace hard age verification tools, of which again we'd like to reiterate that we do not believe that this is an appropriate solution and it is highly improbable that any version of age verification that requires ID will respect privacy standards established by the Charter, it must therefore maintain the highest level of privacy-respecting standards and must be auditable.
I'd like to really underline auditable. Privacy by default, minors' accounts must be set to private by default, hiding personal data and social media content from non-connections to prevent unwanted contacts. And I'd like to conclude by saying that at CDT Europe we really do believe that safety by design for all will not only address the harms faced by young people online, but the harms that we collectively face as a society. The onus should and must be therefore placed on platforms to making sure that their products are safe for everyone who uses them. Thank you very much.
Thank you so much. So this concludes the speaker round of the first panel and now we have the opportunity for the members to come in and give statements but also ask questions. So I have already, I cannot read everything, but I try, Pablo from the EPP on my list.
Pablo Arias Echeverría
Thank you very much, chair, I'm going to speak in Spanish. Bueno, lo primero que quería era agradecer a los ponentes, a la Comisión, al representante de Meta, de BEUC y de CDT Europe. Bueno, yo la verdad es que con este tema es un tema que efectivamente ya hay un debate a nivel de toda la Unión Europea y debemos de abordarlo de manera ágil y de manera también prudente, porque al final cuando hay un debate se nos mete mucha presión y al final lo que podamos hacer aquí debe ser muy efectivo, porque efectivamente los menores son consumidores vulnerables y no podemos fallarles. En la cuestión de lo que nos transmite la Comisión sobre, por ejemplo, las actuaciones sobre contenido para mayores, como por ejemplo el porno, no hay una verificación de edad y por tanto los menores pueden acceder. Bueno, es verdad y aquí se habla de prohibir el acceso a menores a la red, ¿o por qué no prohibimos el porno?
O sea, yo creo que al final estamos siempre en cuestiones que bueno que pueden traer debates que pueden ser falsos, pero o que pueden llevarnos a equivocarnos. Pero sí que debemos de buscar cuáles son las alternativas y lo que nos traslada la representante de Meta pues yo no estoy en absoluto de acuerdo con que estén haciendo lo que deben. Y lo digo con claridad. O sea, vamos a ver, hoy tenemos algoritmos que han hecho que nosotros dejemos de buscar el contenido para que el contenido nos busque a nosotros. O sea, eso es una realidad y realmente ellos no pueden hacer un algoritmo que pueda proteger a nuestros menores.
O sea, son cosas que yo no termino de entender. Han puesto muchas herramientas sobre la mesa, herramientas que no funcionan y nosotros lo que debemos de buscar es tener herramientas que funcionen para que internet sea seguro, no solamente para proteger a los menores, sino sobre todo para que sea un espacio seguro. Y una vez que sea seguro busquemos cómo proteger en aquellas cuestiones que no están. Por tanto, yo lo que le pido a los señores de Meta y a la industria en general, a las plataformas, es que sí queremos hacer las cosas de la mano de ellos, pero queremos que ellos hagan los deberes no sobre sus intereses sino sobre los intereses de aquellos a los que queremos proteger que son los menores. Muchas gracias.
Anna Cavazzini
Thank you very much. We are taking all of your hands but just remind you can also come in the second panel in case you want. We continue with Christel Schaldemose for S&D.
Christel Schaldemose
Thank you very much. First and foremost thanks to the panel, it was very interesting to listen to. I have three quick remarks or questions. First to Deputy Director-General Renate Nikolay. Already today with the Article 28 and the guidelines, we have clear rules on the fact that if the platforms they don't comply with their own rules on age limits, it's a violation of the DSA.
So and I know that you're looking into some of it, but we know from Danish surveys that 50% of 10-year-old kids have a social media account and 94% of the kids in Denmark are on social media before the age of 13.
It's not just Meta, it's all of them. So you need to do more. Why can't you already use the rules we have in place today? Then to Meta, a question. You know, it sounds fantastic everything you're doing here, but why should we trust you?
You're very late on this. You knew it for years. I mean, when we made the DSA, we had Frances Haugen here. She told us about the horrible way you treated young women, have the knowledge about the harms your algorithms did and you did nothing to prevent it. So why should we trust you now?
Is it just because the situation is that you're under political pressure? Honestly, it's, I mean, I'm really curious about this. And secondly, or thirdly, and the last question is for CDT Europe. You're against an age limit and you say that we need to use the DSA and we need to make sure that the platforms are responsible. The last I agree, they need to be aware and they need to make sure that dangerous content is not reach kids, they should not be there, and secondly, young people.
But how can you say that we should not have an age limit when we see how the platforms are acting? I mean, I completely agree that we also need to make our young people aware and work and and learn about how to be online. But the way you're doing it is in fact, instead of helping the kids, I think you're doing the opposite with the with the suggestions you have. So I think that you need to change your point of view on this. You're not protecting the kids.
Thanks.
Kim Van Sparrentak
Thank you very much for the Greens, Kim van Sparrentak.
Thank you very much and thanks for the input for on and your insights on this. I think my main my main question remains, you know, when we're talking about protection of minors, you say we give parental controls, you put basically all the responsibility on on parents while you're at the same time acknowledging that you've created a tool that is dangerous for kids. Why are you refusing to fully take responsibility yourself? And how do you see also the relation to the tool being not only harmful for minors, but the tool is also clearly harmful for adults? Isn't it high time you actually take responsibility to make a tool that is safe for everyone?
I know you might have to make a little less profit, but also looking at your profit numbers, I think you can actually afford that in order to make the world a safer place. Thank you.
Thank you very much for EPP, Mr. Tsiordas.
Dimitris Tsiodras
Yes, dear colleagues, let me speak in my mother tongue, Greek. Ευχαριστώ, κυρία Πρόεδρε. Δυστυχώς τα παιδιά είναι όλο και περισσότερο αντιμέτωπα με ακατάλληλο και επικίνδυνο περιεχόμενο που θέτει σε κίνδυνο τη σωματική και ψυχική τους υγεία. Τα ευρήματα του πρόσφατου Ευρωβαρόμετρου είναι αποκαλυπτικά. 25% των εφήβων έχει εκτεθεί σε περιεχόμενο που προωθεί ρητορική μίσους, 21% των εφήβων νιώθει ότι πιέζεται να ακολουθήσει συγκεκριμένα πρότυπα ομορφιάς, ενώ το 17% των εφήβων έχει υποστεί εκφοβισμό και παρενόχληση στο διαδίκτυο.
Γνωρίζουμε ότι η έκθεση σε τέτοιο περιεχόμενο πολλαπλασιάζεται από το σύστημα συστάσεων των πλατφορμών, το οποίο όπως σκοπεί στο να κρατάει τα παιδιά κολλημένα στην οθόνη. Και η σημερινή ακρόαση αναδεικνύει για άλλη μια φορά τη σημασία της συνεργασίας όλων των μερών και ειδικά των πλατφορμών για να διασφαλίσουμε ένα ασφαλέστερο διαδίκτυο για τα παιδιά. Η πρώτη μου ερώτηση είναι για την εκπρόσωπο της Κομισιόν. Ποιες παραπάνω ενέργειες χρειάζονται έτσι ώστε οι πλατφόρμες να ανταποκρίνονται και στις προσπάθειές μας για πιο αποτελεσματική εφαρμογή του νομοθετικού πλαισίου;
Σε ό,τι αφορά τους εκπροσώπους των τεχνολογικών εταιρειών, θα ήθελα να ρωτήσω, μετά την υιοθέτηση των guidelines της Κομισιόν, θεωρείτε ότι έχετε κάνει όλες τις αλλαγές προκειμένου τα παιδιά να μην έχουν πρόσβαση σε ακατάλληλο γι' αυτά περιεχόμενο; Έχετε προχωρήσει στην απενεργοποίηση λειτουργιών που συμβάλλουν στην υπερβολική χρήση και τον εθισμό, όπως τα push notifications; Και τέλος, τι κάνετε για την αντιμετώπιση περιστατικών εκμετάλλευσης και κακοποίησης των παιδιών και πιο συγκεκριμένα πώς διασφαλίζετε ότι προσωπικές πληροφορίες και τα δεδομένα των παιδιών δεν είναι προσβάσιμα σε αγνώστους και ότι δεν μπορούν να προστεθούν σε διαδικτυακές ομάδες και συνομιλίες με αγνώστους χωρίς τη ρητή συγκατάθεσή τους; Ευχαριστώ.
Thank you very much. Laura Ballarín for the S&D.
Laura Ballarín Cereza
Muchas gracias, voy a hablar en castellano también y muchas gracias a todo el panel, muy interesante. Voy a dirigirme específicamente a Meta porque tengo muy poco tiempo y es donde quiero centrar mi atención. Muchas gracias por sus explicaciones y por preocuparse por la salud mental de nuestros menores, pero tengo que decir que las cuentas de adolescentes no funcionan. Y no es que lo crea o que tengamos dudas, es que lo he comprobado. He hecho un experimento, he creado una cuenta falsa de una niña de once años que se llama Clara Rubio, creada con una foto de inteligencia artificial, pretende tener trece años, la he creado sin ningún problema falsificando su edad sin ningún tipo de control.
Y lo que vemos es que si un menor crea una cuenta no hay ningún control parental. Estamos hablando de control parental cuando son los padres que crean cuentas a menores, pero cuando los menores se crean las cuentas no hay ningún tipo de control y es más, los desconocidos les pueden enviar mensajes y todas estas herramientas que dicen no funcionan. Con lo cual, mis preguntas son: ¿esto es una negligencia de su empresa con los ingenieros tan listos que tienen o es un ejercicio de blanqueamiento por la presión popular? En segundo lugar, ¿qué les dice a esas familias que están desbordadas, destrozadas porque sus hijas han caído en la anorexia o son víctimas de ciberbullying o casos peores como que sufren self-harming, heridas? Por último, ¿por qué este vídeo seguramente no se va a ver en Instagram porque tienen un algoritmo fantástico que cuando critico a Meta nadie ve mis vídeos, pero en cambio no pueden controlar el algoritmo para que los niños no vean contenido inapropiado?
Muchas gracias.
Marion Walsmann
Ja, ich wollte auch gerne Deutsch sprechen. Mir geht es noch mal um die DSA-Leitlinien der Kommission, noch mal etwas stärker danach zu haken. Die DSA-Leitlinien der Kommission empfehlen ja Funktionen, die eine übermäßige Nutzung fördern, darunter die automatische Wiedergabe, Push-Benachrichtigungen, Lesebestätigungen und andere auf Nutzerinteraktionen ausgerichtete Designmerkmale standardmäßig zu deaktivieren. Welche dieser Schutzmaßnahmen hat Meta standardmäßig für alle Minderjährigen in der EU umgesetzt und welche Funktionen haben Sie beibehalten, da sie für Ihr auf Nutzerinteraktion basierendes Geschäftsmodell weiterhin wirtschaftlich wichtig sind? Und das bitte ganz konkret.
Und zur Funktion zur Maximierung der Nutzerinteraktion, können Sie da etwas nennen, was in der EU dauerhaft entfernt wurde und nicht nur optional angeboten wurde?
Katarina Barley
Herzlichen Dank, ich werde ausnahmsweise auch mal Deutsch sprechen. Erstens meine Frage an die Kommission, wir haben es von dem BEUC-Vertreter gehört bezüglich CPC, aber eigentlich möchte ich generell fragen, müssen wir nicht die den Anreiz für die Unternehmen verstärken, denn bisher ist es ja bei fast allen Verfahren so, dass am Anfang ein Dialogverfahren entsteht.
Also sie können eigentlich immer erstmal gegen die Regeln verstoßen und können dann im Laufe des Verfahrens überlegen, ob sie vielleicht das Risiko eingehen, nachher bestraft zu werden unter DSA. Aber jedenfalls können sie es erstmal probieren. Finden Sie nicht, dass wir da von Anfang an strenger sein müssen, als wir das bisher sind? Frage an Meta: Erstens, wie genau stellen Sie das Alter der Userinnen und User fest? Mit welchen Mechanismen arbeiten Sie da?
Und zweitens bei den Teen-Accounts: Sie haben ja früher auch schon mal Teen-Accounts gehabt. Und erstaunlicherweise waren die Vorkehrungen dort strenger, als sie heute sind. Also Sie haben so stolz von dem Sleep Mode gesprochen, dass man zwischen 22 und 6 Uhr keine Push-Nachrichten bekommt. Herzlichen Glückwunsch. Wenn die Kinder es mal schaffen, tagsüber das verdammte Ding aus der Hand zu legen, dann macht's irgendwann pling und sie kommen werden wieder kommen wieder rein, kommen wieder rein.
Also den Suchtfaktor gerade gegenüber jungen Menschen, den könnten Sie ausschalten, den müssten Sie auch ausschalten, weil in den Leitlinien drinsteht, dass Push-Nachrichten eigentlich nicht für für Minderjährige nicht aktiviert sein sollten. Genauso wie Likes. Dass Kinder, vor allen Dingen Mädchen, sich abhängig fühlen davon, wie viele Likes sie bekommen für einen Beitrag. Das sollte eigentlich ausgeschaltet sein bei den Teen-Accounts. Sie hatten das schon mal bei früheren Teen-Accounts.
Wie kann es sein, dass Sie zurückfallen im Schutzstandard von Minderjährigen? Und schließlich, ich teile die Kritik meiner Kollegin Christel Schaldemose bezüglich der Argumentation von CDT. Habe ich Sie richtig verstanden, dass wir eigentlich die den Schutzstandard für Minderjährige online für alle haben müssten? Denn das ist ja die Konsequenz Ihrer Argumentation, wenn wir keine Alterskontrolle machen, wenn es nur auf Safe Internet insgesamt ankommt. Eigentlich müsste dann derselbe Schutz, den wir für Minderjährige fordern, für alle gelten.
Brando Benifei
Vielen herzlichen Dank. Now Brando Benifei for S&D as well.
Thank you, Chair. Dear colleagues, first of all, thank you to all the panelists for their insights. Many issues have been raised already by colleagues that I share, but I will focus my remarks on a slightly different point, on the impact of AI aggravating the scale and speed of harms caused by minors to minors online, from nudifiers to harmful manipulation, deepfakes to addictive design. And in so doing, laying bare the central problem with the implementation and enforcement of our digital rulebook. I want to concentrate on this point because the main challenge is that enforcement is far too slow and under-resourced.
When the Commission investigates a platform for addictive design and risks to minors, as we saw with the proceedings against TikTok, it took two full years just to reach preliminary findings. Adding speed and complexity of AI, for example in addressing AI chatbot companions, the AI Office, as less than 100 case handlers, appear poorly equipped to supervise hundreds of AI systems and deliver dissuasive actions. So I would like to ask to Mr. Gams in particular about the strengthening the role of the Commission. Does the Commission plan on increasing funding and staff? This law enforcement is exacerbated by fragmentation.
...that the same AI harm may raise DSA systemic risk duties, AI Act prohibitions or obligations, GDPR questions on profiling and intimate data, and consumer law concerns around manipulative design. So what about a digital rulebook enforcement toolbox with common principles and coordination rules? Could the Commission use this approach to align guidance on minors, manipulation, vulnerability and AI safety across different areas: DSA, AI Act and consumer acquis? Thank you very much.
Conceptually, generative AI is a cross-cutting problem, yet we implement in silos.
Anna Cavazzini
Thank you very much. I put myself now on the list, very quickly also to Meta. A lot of people and my colleagues talked about the algorithm and the danger of algorithms, especially for minors. I want to get back to the data. We discussed it several times here in the committee, especially when we negotiated the AI... the DSA, I'm sorry.
And I get these questions a lot by consumers, by voters. So when people talk amongst friends, then all of a sudden they have the advertisement of these products they talk about in their timelines. Or when people Google something, and then all of a sudden they have, you know, the subject they Googled in their timelines as advertisement. Or also what happened to me lately, I was connected with people on other platforms, and then all of a sudden I had the same exact people as kind of friend suggestions on Instagram. And I wonder how this can be.
So can you confirm that the platform is neither listening to what we are saying, nor taking any data from Google, nor taking data from any other platform that is not in the Meta universe? And what are you exactly doing with our data? And this is especially of course also important for minors. So what is happening to the data of our minors? Thank you.
I think there were no more questions, if I'm not mistaken. So I will give the floor back to the panel in the same order. We start with Renate Nikolai. And normally you have like two minutes, but... yeah.
Renate Nikolay
Thank you, Chair, and thanks for the questions. Let me kind of maybe talk about some aspects that have been raised around efficient application of the guidelines of Article 28. I think if you look at our enforcement activities, we are really going into the kind of the details when it comes to minor protection online around the account settings. This is the kind of the in particular the ongoing TikTok case, and there will be kind of next steps in the future. We are looking at the addictive design features.
This is at the heart of the preliminary finding in the TikTok case that was mentioned. We are looking at age assurance in various kind of ways, in particular the preliminary findings on the Meta case that I mentioned is about that. But we are also looking at the recommender system, and this is in particular the ongoing investigation on the rabbit hole cases. So if you look at what we are doing, how we are capturing the guidelines, we are really kind of slicing them in our different enforcement actions. Of course, that's why I started my introductory remarks with the guidelines.
Our hope would have been that just by producing the guidelines as kind of the the kind of the guidance for the platforms, that they would do more. That they would do more in terms of, you know, by default settings, you know. And and here, indeed, we do not see enough, and that's why we are have to enforce. We have to be tough digital regulators, and we might also have to do more depending on what the expert panel says and what we will decide internally. On the kind of the... so in the again, the age verification of children, the issue is in the guidelines, we did not have our, you know, age verification app ready a year ago.
A year ago, we were at the moment where we started pioneering with certain Member States in view of the digital wallet to experiment in the piloting phase. So we could not in the guidelines, and that's why it's kind of very carefully defined, we couldn't say do this or do that. I think now we are kind of moving into a different territory because we are advancing on our age verification debate also in the European Union, bearing in mind privacy and and safety of course in this context.
But that's why you couldn't kind of, you know, say in the guidelines do this to have, you know, an age verification. We simply give criteria. We said it has to be effective. It has to be privacy friendly. I think that was the approach we were taking.
And then maybe to the question about AI and how does the whole kind of digital landscape fit together. I think this is a very pertinent question. And I think we also discussed it a bit in the DSA working group yesterday. The AI Act will come into full application on the 2nd of August mainly, apart from the annex on high risk. So there's a huge expectation that of course we will also see the impact from the AI Act.
And there's an absolute need to bring the different kind of, you know, enforcement systems, the DSA platform directorates, the AI office in a better coherence. Luckily we can easily do that because they are all under the roof of the DG Connect and we are already proactively kind of, you know, preparing for that. Because indeed, you know, I think if we want to be an effective kind of, you know, player on minor protection online, we have to bring the different strings together. That goes also for consumer acquis, that goes for data privacy. And that's already quite a debate.
I don't know whether you follow, but the EDPS has launched an interesting debate about kind of coherence amongst the different regulators. And I think that will have to be discussed more in the future. First because there are resources constraints. You know very well that we are building up the capacities in the AI office, so there will be more resources coming, but definitely the coherence point is an important one. Thank you.
Hubert Gambs
Thank you so much, Hubert.
Thank you, Chair. With regard to, you know, a better, more effective enforcement and the effectiveness was mentioned several times and it's clear that we need to use all the tools and we have to make them work and function well together. And this is exactly also the, you know, as far as consumer law is concerned, this is the objective, this is the purpose of the revision of the Consumer Protection Cooperation network and enforcement, which we want to strengthen so exactly to raise the incentives for traders to comply. We don't want never-ending dialogues and we know we have to become better there because we need effective protection, timely protection for consumers, for all consumers, but of course with a particular focus on minors. And we look at several possibilities how we can raise and increase this effectiveness.
One thing is that we look at, you know, for our procedures together with the national consumer protection authorities to look at clearer timelines, binding timelines also to see that we can really get results in a more timely fashion. We need a more effective coordination and the right tools to do this coordination. And this concerns the level of course between the national level and the European level. It also concerns the level of the various regulators and enforcers at EU level. And there I think for example, you know, we will look at the possibility to exchange information between the colleagues that enforce the DSA, between the colleagues that enforce the General Data Protection Regulation, the DMA, but of course also what we do under consumer law with the Consumer Protection Cooperation.
And what we of course need to cover with the enforcement are all traders, so the platforms but also other traders that are effective and don't stick to the rules. We have to make sure that our enforcement tools we use them in a complementary, not overlapping fashion and we really have to make sure that we are more effective. And one tool that we're also looking at, you know, is what should the Commission do?
You know, should we have our role, we will certainly continue our role as coordinating the network, but we might also look at, in order to increase the effectiveness, we might look at a stronger role for some high-profile cases that go very far, that cover, you know, a lot, a big part at least of the of the European Union, whether there the Commission should also have direct enforcement powers. This is what we're also looking at. Thank you very much.
Thank you so much. With that, I give the floor back to Ms. Hopkins.
Tara Hopkins
Thank you. I'm just I'm going to try and fly through all of the questions because there there were quite a few, but do because I've got my glasses I can see you and I'm looking at my notes, so please shout if I go too fast or too far over. So lots of questions there. I'm going to begin with the question about algorithm and personalization because I think it's really important, it came up several times. Algorithms are a really important part of how we keep young people safe when they are using our platforms.
Personalization is one of our most strong tools that we have to keep young people safe when they are using our platform. We look at a range of different signals when someone is using Instagram to ensure that we are providing them with engaging and most importantly, age-appropriate experiences when when they're using our apps. So when we look at the algorithm, it is a number of different signals that are coming through to us, including the age, including what you're engaging with, including who you're following, that we use to keep you safe when you're using our platform. When we know that you are a teen, the algorithm, the recommendations, the personalization that we give you as a teenager is specifically because we know that you are a teenager, which again takes us back to age, which which I'll talk about as well. But I just wanted to be very clear that we believe that algorithms and personalization are very, very strong part of how we keep young people safe.
We do also though give tools. So I think I mentioned before, time spent tools, because I think a lot of people confuse algorithm and the amount of time that someone is using on our platform with the amount of time they're spending on our platform. I talked about that earlier on. We have quite strict tools about how much time you can spend on our platform and parents can take it further. We have the alternative topic nudge.
So if a young person is looking at the same type of content over and over again, we will suggest to them an alternative topic nudge. Again, we have to be very careful of privacy here and not stigmatize someone. A young teenage girl might be interested in beauty. That's okay. That's quite normal for a young teenage girl if she wants to.
We just have to make sure that she is not that teenager is not seeing content that is not appropriate for her or that could be harmful for her. The second point was around the responsibility of of parents and putting the responsibility on parents. Again, I want to be very clear. With teen accounts, our intention absolutely is to take the burden away from parents, which is why we have defaulted all of those protective settings on for teenagers under the age of 18. But parents do have a really important role and we believe they have a really important role from the conversations that we have with them.
So for those parents that want to take it further, if they want to set up supervision on Instagram, they can see who their teenager has been engaging with, who they've been messaging over the last seven days, not the messages themselves, but who they've been messaging over the last seven days. They can restrict Instagram if they wish to do so entirely, as low as like five or 10 minutes a day if a parent wishes to do so. But we don't put the burden on parents. We are taking the burden away from parents and defaulting all of these protections on for them. The question about why now, I would say we've been investing in teen safety for many, many years.
Billions and billions of dollars have been spent on this. We have over 50,000 people who work on this specifically and AI is helping us to get better and better at this. So we're investing very heavily in AI to help us, particularly around age, but not just age.
The question about profit, again, I just want to be very clear, we do not take profit over teen safety. As I said, we're, we're investing billions in teen safety and keeping young people safe. Engagement has been impacted on Instagram and, and will be on Facebook and others by the teen account experience. When we default every teenager that we know to be a teenager into a private account, that has an impact on engagement. So I want to be very clear that we have made that decision because we think it's the right thing to do and because we want teens to have time well spent when they're using our platform.
We talked about age, I was asked a few questions about age. We use many, many ways to try and understand the age of those who are using our platform. So at sign-up, we ask for age. We have friction at sign-up if a young person doesn't tell us their correct age when they then try to put in a new, a new age. As I mentioned, we are now running very, very enhanced AI detection in, enhanced detection in the EU to be able to find teens who may have joined Instagram in the past and not told us their age.
We look at a number of signals. We don't always talk about it publicly because we don't necessarily want people to go around and circumvent that, but we look at things like their profile picture, who they're following, what creators they're following, look at a number of different signals to understand if a teen is actually, or an adult is actually a teen, and then we move them automatically into the most protective settings that we have, similar to the, to the teen account settings. So we don't ask them, we just move them into those most protective settings because we, again, we think it's the right thing to do. There was one question about AI, again, incredibly important. It's, it's a huge part of the future of, of Meta and the future for teens.
The opportunity and the value from AI is extraordinary, but again, I want to be very clear, we've taken a, a pause when it comes to things like AI chatbots and how AIs will interact with teenagers because we want to get it right. And this is moving so, so fast. So teenagers on Instagram, again, when they want to engage with an AI, it can only, it's what we describe as white-listed, it can only be a very, very, very limited number of AIs around kind of coaching and, and education and tutorials because this is moving at pace and we want to get it right. So I just want to be clear that we are thinking about it very carefully about how teenagers will engage with AI, both be able to get the most out of AI but keeping them as, as safe as we, as we possibly can. I hope I've answered most, I'm very happy to speak to members afterwards.
The data question?
Yeah, so on, on data, and again, it's a very technical question, I think probably the best thing for us to do is to have a conversation with you afterwards. Again, the way we look at data is we look at lots and lots again of different signals that are coming across all the family of apps at Meta. The specific examples you just gave, honestly, I think it's probably best if I, if I take that away and come back to you and, and explain it.
So you could not publicly say this is not the case that you're not checking my Google and my conversations?
Tara Hopkins
I, honestly, it's a very technical question, so I, I need to go back and talk to my colleagues about it.
Okay.
Anna Cavazzini
Okay. Thank you. Then we come to the second panel. Thanks so much for the speakers of the first panel. It was very interesting and I think there is some need for follow-up, I would say.
Yeah. So now we come to the panel filling the gaps in current EU legislation towards a stronger EU approach to protecting minors online, so a little bit more forward-looking. We addressed the gaps and the problems and now we talk about what we can do. We start again with the Commission, this time Hubert Gambs first, and then of course I welcome also the other speakers.
Please.
Hubert Gambs
Thank you chair, honorable members. In your November own initiative report, you called for an ambitious action to close remaining regulatory gaps for the protection of minors online. And when it comes to EU consumer law, this is precisely what we're working to do through the Digital Fairness Act, which Commission plans to propose before the end of the year. And we have paid particular attention to the expectations highlighted for the DFA in your report. And I quote: targeted advertising, influencer marketing, addictive design, loot boxes, in-app currencies in video games and dark patterns.
End of quotation. These are all areas included also in our impact assessment. And of course we will also carefully factor in the recommendations of the special panel on child safety online that we expect on the 13th of July. In the preparation, we have gathered extensively data and inputs from a very large range of relevant stakeholders. We have listened also to minors themselves and nearly 5,000 children aged 12 to 17 have responded to our survey through the EU's children's participation platform.
A summary of the results has been published last week and it clearly indicates that children themselves acknowledge that more effective protections are necessary. And Commissioner Michael McGrath also held a youth dialogue on digital fairness as recently as last week in Slovenia. And we will of course take all this data and evidence into account to design a targeted, proportionate response that closes the gaps and is fully coherent with and complementary to existing rules, especially of course the digital rulebook. The Digital Fairness will we will seek to make a difference for young consumers by reinforcing, clarifying and harmonizing the minimum rules that are applicable to all types of traders online. And the objective is really to leave no loopholes and avoid any risk of circumvention.
And this is important also when it comes to actors not falling under the scope of the Digital Services Act. For example, most video games do not qualify as platforms and are therefore not covered by the DSA. We also have to take into account that business models are evolving rapidly and they are blurring the lines between social media platforms and direct retail e-commerce. And I would like to tell you about mention some examples of measures that we are currently exploring and that are particularly relevant for minors. The first is with regard to spending and attention maximizing features, such as infinite scroll or loot boxes, where we are looking how we can assess and how we can give ways to consumers to give them in general more effective control.
When it comes to minors, we are looking at whether such features should be switched off by default or simply prohibited. Second example on unfair personalization. We are looking into whether the existing prohibition of targeted advertising towards minors should be extended to other types of traders beyond platforms. Third, we will seek to set clear rules on influencer marketing with respect to clear disclosure of commercial content and the limitation to marketing of certain harmful products to children. Of course, very importantly, in full alignment with the audiovisual media services directive, which is also currently under review as Renate has mentioned.
I think it is also important to remember that when we strengthen the rules for all consumers, this will also benefit minors. And the DFA could clarify and strengthen the rules on dark patterns. An example is, you know, presenting the most expensive option more prominently. This is of course something that should not, must not happen. In addition, we could also include more specific rules on dynamic pricing with unexpected price increases, which is very annoying to for consumers and should not happen and should also not happen to young fans and minors.
To conclude, I think the gaps that you have identified in your own initiative report are the gaps that the Digital Fairness Act is being built to close. And our goal is really a high and consistent level of protection of young consumers in the European Union. I think we can safely say that we have a strong foundation, but we have to work together to strengthen it, and we are committed to step up enforcement, which is crucial also. Thank you.
Renate Nikolay
Thank you very much, Chair, ladies and gentlemen. Just to add to what Hubert has said and just to also reassure you that we're working hand in hand in the Commission on designing the kind of the next steps. Of course it's important, as was said, that when the Digital Fairness Act kind of addresses issues, the AVMSD review addresses issues, we do this in full kind of coherence with the DSA kind of, you know, context. So no duplication, no kind of also limiting of the enforcement kind of potential that the DSA is having and that we are hopefully, you see that also, using quite well. So let me just for that, for the sake of that, repeat what the DSA already covers in terms of scope, just to have the the right setting.
Of course it covers all types of platforms, you know, whether they are large or small. That's an important one because even though the Commission is in charge of the very large online platforms, the smaller ones do not fall out. We have the kind of the Team Europe approach with the national digital service coordinators and they are looking after the smaller ones. And sometimes it's even that they start an investigation and then we pick it up, which was for instance the case of Snapchat, that started with the Danish, with the Dutch kind of digital service coordinator. So that's for the platforms.
Of course it covers social media, you know, we talked about that, you know, TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, YouTube, Yubo. But it also covers video sharing platforms and streaming sites like YouTube and Twitch. And it covers gaming platforms. It's important to note that, where users can play, create and share content. It kind of covers the Minecrafts, the Steams, the Epic Games.
So it's important to kind of, you know, be very clear about what is covered and what is not covered. And just to explain that to you, it's also the Dutch digital service coordinator that is running a case against Roblox in that context. So that is covered by the DSA. And it covers the website and the apps to view and to share content like Discord or Reddit. So when we are designing the kind of the future context and how to fill the gap, building also on your own initiative report, it's important to bear that in mind.
Under own-initiative report, a lot of the debate has advanced in the European Union. I mean, at the last informal Telecom Ministers' meeting at the end of April, it was clear that there was a call from almost across all Member States to aim for a harmonised approach on the next steps on minor protection online. And that of course also goes for a potential social media delay. You are seeing that in some Member States this is happening already, but at the same time, even those Member States who are enacting already social media delay initiatives, they say it's better from a single market perspective to have a harmonised approach in the European Union. Of course, we cannot preempt today where we sit what will be exactly the outcome from the expert panel, but this is just to kind of give you that context.
And that's an important one, and of course we in the Commission will then follow up on all the kind of recommendation. Two aspects that I would still like to highlight in this context, also building on the experience from Australia. You know that we have also from the DSA regulator's point of view an MOU with the eSafety Commissioner. We are in very, very daily exchanges with them. And I think the Australian example is also an example to kind of draw lessons from.
For instance, to draw the lesson that if you have an age gate and you don't have an effective age verification, you're missing an important tool to actually effectively enforce it. And that's why I think it's also important to bring into this debate that effective age verification is something that has to be kind of tackled. So also as a result of the expert panel, and we will have to see where we do it, you know. So that is not decided and will probably be a package, but let's not kind of, you know, anticipate any kind of decisions on that. But it's important to really build on that.
And here I want to stress and also counter a little bit the criticism that we heard that with the digital wallet architecture, where of course now a year on compared to when we started the pioneering work with the pilots with some Member States, we are much more advanced. You have seen that we have a recommendation out where we are recalling from the Member States because we have a legal obligation by the end of the year to have the digital wallet structure everywhere in the Member States. The digital wallet structure is an architecture that is privacy-friendly and that is secure. We have kind of in our work on the kind of the age verification app even kind of applied the zero-knowledge proof methodology, which is the best what you can at the moment have in terms of privacy-friendly methodology. And of course this is I think a tool that we really want to bring into this debate.
Is it the only one? Probably not. Could there be other market solutions? Probably yes. But to also kind of pick up something that we heard from the platforms, to say this should all be done by the App Stores, that is a little too easy, you know.
There is a responsibility also for the platforms themselves to actually kind of have a role as we said in the guidelines and as we should also now do when we probably kind of design a package to really have a more effective minor protection online. But it's important that if you want to have it effectively, if you want to avoid massive circumvention, and you have probably seen the first report that came out of Australia at the end of March about the experiences with their age gate, yes, they had an effect, but it's also massive circumvention. And that we really need to kind of avoid if we go down that route. The last point I want to make is really because we are both involved in the expert panel and it's of course for me also a little bit of a revisiting of the whole kind of, you know, broad kind of, you know, membership that we also had when we did the inclusive work on our guidelines on Article 28. When kind of designing the follow-up, we have indeed to kind of balance the different aspects.
We have to balance the protection of minors, which is key. But we also have to kind of, you know, take into account what we are hearing a lot when we're talking to the youth, that they also want to have a participation, a participation in the digital environment, a safe participation, but they also are mindful of their participation.
So I think it's important to bear that balance in mind. And that of course leads to the conclusion that there is a role for all of us. There's a role for legislators to make the next moves so that we have a good regulatory framework. There's a role for regulators to be effective in enforcing the rules. There's a role for platforms for sure.
But there's also a broader role that goes beyond regulation. And I'm sure the expert panel recommendations will bring that up, that there is a work to be done for society on media literacy, on education, for schools to kind of play a part in that, and of course for parents to be equipped for that. So that's a really kind of holistic approach. I just want to underline that because whilst we want to focus a little bit on what we might do next on the regulatory framework, I think we will have a debate that will be broader than just kind of where do we fill the gaps, but that is really a societal debate and that needs to be held. Thank you.
Thank you so much. We move to the next speaker. I welcome Jan Penfrat from EDRi, policy advisor. Welcome.
Jan Penfrat
Thank you so much, honorable chair, honorable members, for having invited us. A quick word. European Digital Rights is a network of 50 organizations. We've been defending fundamental rights in the digital era since 2003. I can only re-emphasize the importance of a strong and ambitious Digital Fairness Act and strong consumer laws as a means to improve the protections of minors online.
The details have already been mentioned. There's a lot of good solutions that are listed in the Article 28 guidance of the DSA. And I can only also re-emphasize what has been said before, that the enforcement, the weak enforcement that we're currently seeing of the Digital Services Act and related laws is a major threat to minors' safety online. The Commission has referred a couple of times to the dialogues that they're having with online platforms. I agree with the members who questioned whether the platforms can be trusted on this.
I don't think they can. They've had a lot of time to fix their systems and they haven't. But then the question is, why do we still have these lengthy, lengthy dialogues? Why is this still a thing? If I speed on the highway, I can't expect that the authorities come to me and say, oh, can we please have a dialogue to help you on your journey towards compliance?
No, they're just going to fine me in a way that I'm never going to speed again. And that is what we should be doing with the platforms as well. That having been said, the DSA and hopefully the upcoming DFA already contain a wealth of measures that we can take to protect people online, to protect minors in particular online. This has already been mentioned. And I'm sometimes surprised about how little space this gets in the debate and how much we're focusing on new solutions that are unlikely to make a big positive difference for the protection of minors online.
I find it almost funny how many people refer to the expert panel's views and how we don't want to preempt their views. The literal Commission President has already preempted their views and said that she's convinced that we should do social media bans. So I don't understand why we're even waiting for the expert panel. It looks like, it sounds as if the Commission has already made up their mind. And I think that is not helpful for the debate on how to protect minors online.
And I think that is also something that can be seen if you look at the IMCO's own committee report, INI report on the topic, which was heavily influenced by those as well. And I think sometimes it would be helpful to look at the measures that we already have and how they have not been used and not been enforced. There has been the debate about whether this should be done rather on platform level or rather on the App Store level or the operating system level. I think all of those levels have good areas where they can be leveraged, that can help us protect minors better.
It's not one against the other or one or the other. They should all work together to make this happen. Everybody who knows EDRi knows that we're not a big fan of big tech companies, certainly not of Apple. But Apple has rolled out one of the systems just in the last operating system version 27, I think, that actually has a couple of good ideas that would help protect minors better, that will help empower parents and guardians to protect minors better and start a conversation with minors about what healthy internet use should look like. The IMCO's own initiative report says we should be, we should be empowering young people.
I think I have a quote here even. It outlines how minors should not be passive technology consumers, but actively in control of the tech that they use. How are they supposed to learn this if we just shut them out? And now some of you may say, oh, we're only doing this for social media and social media. Yes, okay.
But the problem is that we're building these tools based on the assumption that social media is as big as bad as Instagram and Facebook and TikTok. But this is not how social media has to be. If we start regulating the internet as if it was only consisting of big tech companies that are that bad, we will end up with an internet that will only have those companies, unfortunately. I think we have to think bigger and have to ask ourselves, how does social media have to be? How does it have to look like?
What is the designs that we need in order to make it safe for minors online? And then sometimes in this context, we hear the comparison with alcohol or tobacco. Like this is things that we ban minors from anyways and isn't social media just as dangerous? And I think the evidential base is a lot more complicated than that. Sometimes you hear researchers claiming, showing their findings that the social media use is really as problematic as drinking alcohol or tobacco.
But there's just as much research that shows the opposite. And just let me quote one of that research from Harvard researcher Laura Marciano, who has reviewed tons of studies in a meta-study and found that the link between social media use and young people's mental health is at best, what she said, complicated. She did literature reviews and that showed that, and I quote, study results are mixed, associations between social media use and well-being can be positive, negative, and even largely null when advanced data analyses are carried out and the size of the effect is small. She recognizes, like many other researchers, that cyberbullying, online harassment, and exposure to violent, sexual, and hate-based content are issues that need to be addressed, of course. That's super important and I want to stress that that is really something that legislator should be looking at.
But it doesn't mean that banning children from social media is the best way to go about it. In fact, recent examples of other countries who've tried this shows that the effect has largely been not there. So it's ineffective. And it may even be harmful because we take away the possibility of young people to learn about, to learn living in the society that we have digitalized for them. And that is also something that I think when we talk about digital fairness, it feels profoundly unfair to me to expect young people to live in a world that we have built for them, that is pretty terrible sometimes online, while then also taken away their opportunity to learn from them.
It is our responsibility as adults to empower them to live in this society fully. What we do instead with the social media ban is that we basically drop them into the cold water at age 14 or 16 and then leave them alone with it and how somehow to deal with this environment that they've never seen before. Let me also say one word about AI because it's been mentioned by a meta colleague and by a couple of others. I see I have only a few minutes, but that's my last word. It's often mentioned as a particularly risky technology for minors.
Any report has outlined that AI can reduce minors' ability for critical thinking and how AI companions pose a risk to minors as well. It even goes as far as calling for a quick and decisive enforcement of the AI Act and for the better protection of children's privacy online. If this is so important, which I agree it is, why then is this same Parliament just voting through an artificial delay of the AI Act's application for high-risk uses? And why are so many of your colleagues in favor of reducing GDPR protections, which is the very law that should protect minors' personal data? And in particular by allowing the use of personal data for AI training.
And I agree, it is.
So we're saying AI is bad for children, let's protect the children, but then we're also saying, oh, AI is innovation, we should do as much as possible and build tons of data centers and then impose it on everybody. I think there's a real disconnect here and I think this is the conversation we should be having. Thank you.
Thank you very much. Now we come to Mr. Bernd Bracker, Director General of Dot Europe. Welcome.
Benjamin Brake
Yes, thank you very much, chair, members of the committee. Thank you for including Dot Europe into this very important discussion. On a very personal note, this is my first hearing in this first environment, so there's a little bit of excitement on my side. Apologies for that. Dot Europe represents Europe's leading digital platforms.
Our members are already deeply invested in child safety online, not as a compliance obligation, but because it is the right thing to do. This industry, our members, we know that we need to do something on our side and I would like to reassure you that the fact that you can accept, I would like to reassure you on the fact that you could expect more from us. Besides what our members actively are doing to create a safer space on their platforms, at Dot Europe we are having internal discussions on how to best contribute to this debate so that the narrative shifts to platforms are allies in protecting children and empowering them in the best way for the future by enabling them to participate, find resources or peers. We accept that challenge and this is why this is not to be done in silence. We are actively engaging with the European Commission, the Council and the European Parliament alike.
And in parallel, we are preparing some materials that will lead our dialogue with policymakers for the second half of 2026 and beyond. At the same time, we want to push for a pragmatic dialogue where arguments are based on facts rather than anecdotes. Simply saying that platforms are doing nothing for our children, besides not being very constructive, is simply not true. We want to have a meaningful dialogue. This will only happen if we listen to each other and work together.
And this is why besides engaging with policymakers, Dot Europe and its members regularly engage with NGOs, children's right organization, academics and consumer protections association. What we ask in return is an evidence-based legislation where the gaps to be filled, where present, are carefully assessed, don't create additional uncertainty and, most importantly, are clearly implementable. The first panel was already quite clear about this. The EU has a substantial and sophisticated legal architecture for protecting minors online as online and offline consumers. The DSA, the GDPR, the AVMSD, the AI Act, the Unfair Commercial Practice Directive, together these provide real enforceable obligations.
On top of those, our members have built and are developing on a regular basis additional tools to protect minors. Default screen time limits, family pairing features, age-appropriate content settings and wellbeing prompts. And some of our members are already also using the EU age verification app. This all may get less attention than a pure ban, but these solutions exist and they contribute to a safe online environment for all.
I also want to be frank with you and share the concerns that we have when we look at the single market. First, on fragmentation. We are watching a wave of national legislation: France, Greece, Germany probably, each introducing their own age verification architectures, blocklists, mechanisms, parental consent models. The French TRIS notification we have just contributed to illustrate the problem precisely. A bill that introduces a national regulator empowered to classify entire services as harmful to minors, operating outside the DSA's harmonized risk framework, applicable to services regardless of where they are established.
This is not a gap filler, this is a fragmentation engine. The Commission's ongoing work, the Article 28 guideline review and the special panel are the right processes. Parallel national frameworks launched before that process concludes risk locking in incompatible approaches that will be very hard to unwind, or to put it mildly, we would urge the actors, especially on the EU level, to focus on the boring things and then the magic might happen. Second, on consumer law specifically, the Digital Fairness Act will see the light of the day in Q4 this year, probably, after lengthy discussions and outcry from the private sector, by the way not only from platform companies but from a wide range of businesses. Dot Europe was among the signatories of wider industry letters calling out the DFA on the risk of overlaps with existing laws.
Our stance has not changed. We support nuanced action that is based on clear evidence and scientific consensus. We must also ensure that the perimeter of these features is clearly defined so legislators avoid hampering legitimate business practices that consumers enjoy and value, such as personalization. The Digital Fairness Act, for instance, should be in line with the simplification mandate and bring a strong evidence base and not produce negative economic costs and ultimately be ineffective at addressing real harm. We therefore welcome the European Commission's action to engage with stakeholders and assess the digital acquis as such.
To conclude, what would actually help to strengthen minor protection online is first the enforcement of current legislation with a specific emphasis on preventing national divergences. Second, future proposals that do not duplicate what is already in place but clarify the interplay with the DSA. And third, empowering the companies to act to protect minors. It might sound surprising, but on another file, MEPs and member states are discussing how to prevent online providers from protecting users from child sexual abuse material in private communications. This should not be happening while our members are pushed to do more on minor protection.
Protection of minors also includes enabling online providers to search for sexual abuse material. This is currently not possible. We are ready to engage constructively. What we ask for in return is a coherent framework that strikes the right balance between being rigid and provide for flexibility to address what Hubert Gumbs just said, the blurring lines between the different business models.
This should be coherent. What we don't want to see are 27 frameworks. Thank you so much.
Thank you very much. And now we come to the last speaker of the second panel. I welcome Ms. Lies Kreynest, founder and director of Kids Unplugged Belgium. Welcome.
Lies Craeynest
Thank you. Thank you, honorable chair, honorable members. It's also my first time in this Parliament. Thank you for the committee for inviting me on behalf of grassroots parents movements. I'm Lies Kreynest, founder of Kids Unplugged Belgium, and I have a small presentation, so I just have to say next slide each time I want to go to the next moment.
Can be clicked the next slide, please? Yeah, thank you. So I founded Kids Unplugged because of my own experience and the apparent impossible task we've given ourselves: raise children in healthy ways with smartphone devices glued to their hands. The dominant story in my country is that of the first picture, where the online world is fun and children are digital natives. But my experience was that of the second one, and most of the parents around me from all walks of life reported exactly the same experience after they gave a smartphone to their kids.
Children turned into digital captives. What children live today has been called, next slide please, what children live today has been called the great rewiring of childhood. The Eurobarometer released last week shows this clearly. European childhood is now spent on screens. Four and a half hours a day on screens, more than half of it on social media.
One fourth of them exceed six hours of screen time per day during the week. That's one fourth. Most striking finding is that children who start social media earlier, before age 10, stay two hours longer on screens in their later life compared to those who start at 14. And even at 14, they're still at more than five hours in the weekend. So, next slide.
We as parents, we call for a delay in using social media products as they are today, until at least 16. And we rely on children's brain development to explain why. Until 25 years old, the development of the prefrontal cortex, responsible for self-control and the ability to stop, lags behind the impulsive brain. One neuropsychiatrist we work with describes the impulse brain as a racing car without brakes. The biggest gap between the development of these both parts is between 10 and 16 years old.
Social media thrives in this gap. Neuroscientists together with hundreds of psychologists, child psychiatrists, and pediatricians across Europe have called what is going on with our children a public health crisis. Next slide. This situation didn't just happen like that. For 20 years, parents have heard only one message: start children young so they can get a digital head start, without warnings, no minimum ages, no protective advice.
So the network effects and social pressure did their work. Parents gave children smartphones, schools gave them laptops, we moved them all online and then let purely commercial players curate that space. Are we surprised that this somehow went wrong? Imagine showing a smartphone with social media apps to a parent in the 1980s and ask them what age their child should have this instrument. Would they have said 12 or 13?
Not a chance. Next slide. So parents are now organizing to reclaim childhood for our children from commercial players. We're uniting around one message: social media apps are no product for children and we want to delay the key that gives them access to it, the smartphone. The longer and more complete message is, because often it's said that this is too simple, so social media apps as they are today, and AI chatbots, and addictive games, and adult websites are no product for children.
We are now more than 15 grassroots movements in Europe and more than 40 globally. We all together commit to delaying the smartphone through smartphone pacts, so that the social pressure to give one melts away and we can protect our children properly. 30,000 pacts in Spain, 70,000 in Netherlands, 180,000 in the UK, and in Belgium we are also growing. Next slide, please.
But we have a harder time reaching less well-off communities. But economic background shouldn't dictate which children get protection. We need to urgently take all children away from the frontline while regulation catches up. If the DFA is successful, and we hope it will be, and dangerous features will be made illegal, maybe we will have safe social media products around 2030. But if no age limit is introduced today, 30 million European children who are today between 6 and 12 will join platforms between now and then, and they will still be exposed to today's unacceptable risks.
So we fully support the DSA implementation, the revision of the AVMD, and the development of the DFA. We want these regulations to be as strong as possible. But for now, the real situation is that a rubber duck undergoes more independent safety testing than an app used for hours on end by teenagers. Next slide please. So our asks to the EU are the following.
We need an urgent product recall. Parents need a clear loud message: social media as it is today is not safe for children. Two, treat the tech industry as a regulated sector just like food and pharma. Not just social media companies but also the online gaming sector and adult websites. Fix the algorithm, stop addictive design, stop contact by strangers.
No product should be left on the market for children before rigorous testing. Three, until the product is fixed, raise the minimum age across Europe from 13 to at least 16. Real child protection would actually mean 18, that is the definition of children according to the UN. Four, don't allow any Trojan horses in the form of parental consent opt-outs, because commercial incentives always drive the lowest possible age and vulnerable families will find it harder to resist. This cannot become a new inequality generator.
Five, organize a large public health campaign reaching parents and children on the impact of smartphones and social media and introduce public health warnings on the device. And six, build healthy offline spaces for children, a place that we seem to have left alone for a very long time, particularly where vulnerable families live. Next slide. So how should a minimum age of 16 be implemented? Well, this is not for parents to decide.
Age verification is obviously one option, but there are also others. Parents are also citizens, so we also care about privacy. And at the very least we want the EU Data Protection Board principles for age verification to be respected in any solution proposed. And final slide, please. Next slide.
Yeah. We ask you not to fall into common traps, some of them we've also heard today. For example, the framing that it doesn't work. Australia's policy is only six months old. Tech companies are slow-walking implementation.
We cannot give up the first turn, otherwise we definitely have no chance of implementing all the rest. Secondly, referring to the minimum age as a simple ban. Raising the minimum age for using a dangerous product is not a simple ban but an emergency protection until we fix the product. It's also not a ban on children. It's a prohibition of platforms from commercializing childhood.
Three, parents and schools need to get their children online. Teaching media literacy is very important, but just as we can teach sexual education without asking children to practice, we can teach media literacy without creating social media accounts. Four, minimum age takes the incentive away to regulate platforms. We think the opposite is true because they will want the market access. Five, it's too easy to circumvent.
Furthermore, if their friends aren't on it, there's no reason for teens to be on it themselves. I will wrap up now. The fact that it would be more harmful than not having one is also not true. No risk will be eliminated, but it will be massively reduced. On the right for children to have information, social media platforms are commercial environments and they are not necessarily the only place where information can be gotten.
Lies Craeynest
Parents will help you implement this minimum age if they have the right information, they will make sure that children are not on it.
Anna Cavazzini
Thank you. Perfect. Thank you so much. And also especially to those of you who performed the first time in the committee, special thanks that you're here in the lion's cave, but it's not true, we are all very nice. So before I give the floor to the MEPs, let me give the floor back to the speaker of the first panel, Mr. Christian Cirigiri, and so sorry I forgot you to answer of course your questions.
I think it's too hot today, so my brain was not working, so please of course answer from the first panel.
Christian Cirhigiri
Thank you very much, Madam Chair, for the floor once again, and it's been wonderful to hear also the remarks of the second panel. Now, I wanted to just reflect on questions that were asked in the first panel, and one of which was directed to CDT Europe regarding the question of age limits. I'd like first of all to say that we have in this debate because we all, without doubt, recognize the harms that young people are facing when interacting with online platforms. At CDT Europe, what we do believe regarding age limits is that it's important to have caution in how we are advancing in this conversation. What we are noticing, unfortunately, is that political expediency and sometimes is overshadowing the need for in-depth research for understanding how age limits is going to affect fundamental rights and how different children at different ages are going to be affected.
In my remarks, I think one thing I really wanted to highlight is the importance of involving children in this conversation. What is also missing, unfortunately, at this point is the degree of participation of children in this debate that is definitely affecting their rights. So we do believe that it's important to involve them. We do believe that policy around age limits should be based on robust research and that policy debate should be based actually on evidence rather than just political expediency. Thank you.
Pablo Arias Echeverría
Thank you so much and apologies again, but thanks, great that you stayed. And now the MEPs can come in. So I had already some people asking for the floor. We start with Pablo Arias Echeverría for EPP.
Thank you very much, Chair. I'm going to speak again in Spanish. Bueno, una vez más, muchas gracias. La verdad es que es una pena. Fíjese, el señor que ha hablado en última instancia, bueno, pues se ha quedado.
Es verdad que no le ha dado la palabra anteriormente, pero se ha quedado a escuchar el segundo panel, que creo que ha sido también muy interesante. Meta no lo ha hecho. Simplemente me parece curioso. Yo aprendo de las cosas y además hay cosas que me pueden aportar y creo que este panel ha aportado mucho. Quiero hablar de la Comisión.
Sí, y quiero hablar de la protección y verificación de edad. Claro que es fundamental. Sin verificación de edad eficiente es imposible que hagamos nada. Y sobre todo cuando estamos hablando de menores. Si no sabemos su edad es imposible.
O sea, los menores claro que mienten cuando dicen su edad, que se trasladaba en el primer panel. Ahora estamos en verano. Hay piscina de mayores y piscina de pequeños. En la de mayores, por ejemplo, pueden entrar cuando tienen diez años o catorce, dependiendo la piscina, y todos los niños intentan mentir para entrar en la piscina de mayores. Eso es una cosa habitual y es así.
Y por tanto no podemos confiar en que los menores van a dar o decir la verdad cuando se les pregunte su edad. Necesitamos verificadores de edad que efectivamente funcionen. Si no, no seremos eficaces en lo que estamos intentando hacer. Y luego la cuestión de la responsabilidad.
O sea, no, no queremos poner el acento en la responsabilidad en los padres, la vamos a trasladar ahora a las tiendas de aplicaciones. A mí no me parece mal, pero lo que no pueden es evadir su propia responsabilidad. Sobre los que han intervenido posteriormente, bueno, pues lo único que en lo que estoy de acuerdo con el señor Brake de Dot Europe es en lo que no queremos que haya fragmentación en esta cuestión. En todo lo demás, ¿qué quiere que le diga? Lo siento, pero no estoy de acuerdo.
Podemos hablar cuando quiera y estoy dispuesto a hacerlo y creo que tenemos muchas cosas que debatir porque estoy seguro que tiene mucha experiencia y muchas cosas que aportar, pero lo que ha trasladado hoy aquí no, no puedo estar de acuerdo. El señor Perfrand de EDRi, bueno, la innovación y la incongruencia entre innovación y normas de IA y otras normas, pues ¿qué quiere que le diga? Mire, el sector que más ha innovado en el siglo pasado ha sido el sector del automóvil. No hay un sector que más normas tenga sobre seguridad vial y sobre la propia seguridad de la gente que viaja en esos vehículos. Y sin embargo ha sido el sector que más ha innovado.
Por tanto, no hay esa diferencia o esta dicotomía entre innovación y normas. Las normas están para ordenar y para proteger y la innovación tiene que ir de la mano de las normas. Esto lo debemos, insisto, de hacer juntos, por supuesto, y estamos dispuestos a hacerlo, pero que vengan con propuestas que sean aceptables y que sean precisamente para el bien común y para el bien final que es el de la protección de los menores. Muchas gracias.
Laura Ballarín Cereza
Muchas gracias, presidenta, y muchas gracias también al panel que hemos tenido muy interesante también con puntos de vista también diferentes entre la industria, la Comisión, las familias. Quiero centrar dos intervenciones. En primer lugar a la Comisión, me alegro escuchar que estamos trabajando en la línea que este Parlamento ha marcado. Mi grupo político puso el tema de la protección de los menores en línea como prioridad en esta legislatura. Dos años después nos alegra ver que las medidas legislativas avanzan y por supuesto estamos muy pendientes de las conclusiones del panel de expertos que va a presentar la presidenta de la Comisión el 13 de julio.
Pero nos gustaría que vinieran al Parlamento, que vinieran a esta comisión, que nos lo explicaran, que nos involucraran, porque al final hemos sido desde este Parlamento los que hemos trabajado para que este tema esté en la agenda. Así que acompañar las medidas y con mucha expectación. Y mis preguntas van a Kids Unplugged, felicitarles por el trabajo que hacen, por los datos que han presentado. No puedo estar más de acuerdo en las calls que nos hacen a la Comisión Europea, sobre todo dar el mensaje de que no es contradictorio la implementación de las leyes que tenemos hoy en día, pedir nuevas leyes para llenar los vacíos legales que todavía existen con la futura ley de equidad digital, pero también necesitamos una medida de emergencia como es la edad mínima digital a la vez que una verificación de edad efectiva y robusta que proteja nuestra privacidad como medida de emergencia hasta que todo eso se implemente. Es perfectamente complementario.
Y mi pregunta es sobre el rol de los padres también. Hemos visto como Suecia, España han puesto encima de la mesa el rol que padres y adultos tenemos en relación a la protección de los menores. Y me gustaría preguntar qué podemos hacer para concienciar, para que nosotros hagamos un uso responsable de los teléfonos móviles delante de nuestros hijos. ¿Hay que crear zonas libres de móviles en nuestras casas? ¿Cómo podemos evitar darle teléfonos y iPads en los viajes, en los restaurantes para que no nos molesten?
Y por último, ¿qué hacemos con el sharenting, esa publicación de fotos de nuestros niños con todos los riesgos que eso conlleva? Muchísimas gracias.
Muchísimas gracias. Now for the Greens, Alexandra Geese.
Alexandra Geese
Yes, thank you very much. I have a comment to Dot and then a few questions to the Commission. To Dot Europe, my comment is you asked for evidence-based legislation and this feels a little bit like mockery because actually your members are the ones who restrict the access to data for researchers. So we have a very hard time as policymakers, and I speak out of my personal frustration, to actually get evidence and to get independent evidence.
So I would ask you to ask your members to give independent researchers access to the data and then we can do evidence-based legislation. My questions to the Commission, speaking about the DFA, you mentioned an extension of the ban to have minors' data in advertising profiles that already exists within the Digital Services Act. My, I would very much welcome that, but I also see an enforcement gap there. Because I wonder what the Commission is currently doing to actually enforce that ban. I mean, the fact that as an advertiser or as a customer you can't directly choose characteristics of minors is one thing, but that the companies actually keep that data completely separate and don't have it in their advertising profiles, I doubt it, because otherwise we wouldn't have these big problems.
So my question is, do you see an overlap there and what are you planning in terms of concrete enforcement, because I don't know about any investigations very specifically targeting that point. My second question is, when you discuss a social media ban, I think Jan Penfrat from EDRi brought up a significant question: how do you distinguish between social media companies that use toxic algorithms, that use addictive patterns and so on, all the things that are already prohibited by guidelines and just require more enforcement, and other companies that do not do that, or platforms that do not do that? Would you specifically for a possible social media ban designate specific platforms, like it has been done in the DSA and the DMA, and would that then entail also investigations if they don't comply, for example, with the guidelines on minors? And maybe one very quick last question: if you introduce a digital wallet, can you assure that no, that there will be a clear ban to use biometric data for minors? Thank you.
Thank you so much. I still have two speakers and we are running a little bit late, but I guess we can try to finish on time. So very briefly, Katharina, and then I talk for Nikola Minchev who asked me to ask his question. Katharina.
Katarina Barley
Thank you so much. I would like to reiterate two questions that hadn't been answered in the panel before. The one is directed towards the colleague of CDT and to European Digital Rights. If you are against age verification and against a ban for minors, I don't call it a ban, I call it minimum age, how do you want to then get to a protection of minors? I asked it in the first round: do you then think what is healthy for minors has to be the limit for everyone, because we don't know who is a minor and who is not?
And I'm so glad for your presentation, Mrs. Graynest, because nobody has talked about what actually happens to the brain. And I'm particularly grateful for you referring to it's not actually social media that is the problem, it's actually the device. I mean, we know if you give minors, but also adults, this device, you have this sucking in. I mean, if you have a kid looking at pictures moving, it will draw the attention there. And it's not like evidence that you collect because you know certain people, it's neurological facts that using devices is actually bad for the development of brains.
And so thank you very much for stressing that. The second, sorry, the second question that wasn't answered I would like to direct to Dot Europe, which was: if your member companies are so interested in protecting children, how come that, for example, Meta is now applying standards to their teen accounts which are less strict than they used to be before, especially when it comes to likes and also the reminders, the, well, you know what I mean, push notifications.
Thank you. And just to support what you said Mr. Pomfré about the contradiction between the policy on social media bans and on AI liberation, I think you're very right on that one.
Anna Cavazzini
Thank you so much. Then very quickly Nikola Minchev's question from Renew. Nikola believes it is important to avoid fragmentation as national approaches risk creating complexity without necessarily improving protection, and he wants instead focus on a common European approach. He would also like to stress that we must ensure that it addresses the root of the problem, which is not children's access itself but harmful content and the way platforms are designed and operate. When platforms' business models and design contribute to the spread of harmful content, we must ensure that responsibility is placed where it belongs rather than relying on a simple solution of blanket bans for children.
At the same time, social media can also have positive effects. For many young people it provides connection, learning opportunities and a sense of belonging, and we should preserve these benefits. So Nikola's question is, how do we ensure that any future EU measures, including a possible ban on children's access to social media, do not simply push children out of regulated environments where we have mechanisms for oversight and protection towards less regulated online spaces, creating new risks while trying to solve the existing ones? That was Nikola Minchev's question and with that we go to the last round of the panel and again sorry running a little bit late, but I think that also shows the topic is so important and interesting for a lot of members and we just need time to discuss it. Probably start now with the revised order.
I don't know if Mr. Sirigri want to come in again or... yeah. So you start.
Christian Cirhigiri
Right, thank you very much for the question. I think what we'd like to also emphasize is age verification for us is a very important topic, but yet at the same time we do believe that it has to be based on research and that children have to be part of the conversation. Now when it comes to looking at what is healthy online for minors and using that as a standard for how all online platforms should behave in terms of their design and what products they bring forward, I do believe that it actually is the other way around, that platforms should design their products safe for everyone, including for children. And so the conversation really has to start with are platforms safe for everyone? Are platforms designed to be an environment where children, adults and everyone can actually thrive?
And the answer obviously so far has shown that it's actually not the direction in which the conversation is going. So that's all I can say for now.
Lies Craeynest
Thank you very much. We continue with Alice Knight.
I don't think there was a particular question to me, but I just would like to say one thing. As Mr. Nest next to me just says, in fact the platforms are not safe right now. So what we would do with the children now? I have an eleven-year-old going to secondary school in two months' time. Normally everyone around her would have had a smartphone, everyone would have moved on social media.
It's only because of the work and the ideas from Smartphone Free Childhood in the UK that I managed to talk to the other parents around her, managed to convince everyone to delay together, and so now we can protect them together.
Today these products are not safe. We're work on it, we're fix trying to fix it, but don't let your children unlimited on social media. Delay, delay, delay. Thank you.
Thank you very much. Then I give the floor back to Mr. Brake.
Benjamin Brake
Thank you very much, Chair. I try to go through the the questions. Mrs. Barley, I'm really sorry, I can't answer the question on Meta. You need to ask Meta that. I'm sorry.
I'm really sorry. I I can't do that. I'm not a spokesperson from from Meta. On the data researchers, however, Mrs. Mrs. Geese, you asked the question on data access. I think the guidelines for data access were published end of the last year and currently national legislators are actually implementing them and being in dialogue with the with our members.
And in so far, I think that's where we currently are. Can we do better? Probably we can. I'll take this with me. I would like to mention one aspect because I think this was actually not mentioned at all.
The the you mentioned your 11-year-old boy, for example, that you would like to refrain from using using a smartphone. Just imagine an 11-year-old boy growing up in a rural area, let's for the sake of proximity say in East Frisia. 11 years is is an age where young people come to terms with sexuality. Just imagine he finds out or he's figuring or struggling with his identity and he's looking for resources. Now just imagine if he doesn't have a smartphone and he doesn't want to turn to his parents because of shame, because that's what young people normally don't do.
So where are the resources? So I would like you to entertain the thought that a smartphone could actually be a source and an enabling instrument for resources to look for information and to share with peers. And if this is something you might to take away from this discussion, I really would like to see to appeal to you to also see the positiveness. Now, am I in favor of a smartphone ban for like minors or not? I think this is something that could very easily be led to schools and classes to be discussed, being let it be a first exercise of democracy, like from one from one school to another there might be different discussions whether or not to use smartphone, for example, during school time.
But let's go for a pragmatic differentiated approach and not for a general ban of neither the smartphone nor the social media. Thank you.
Thank you very much. Now we come to EDRi, to Mr. Penfrat.
Jan Penfrat
Thank you so much. I and and that really pains me, but I have to partly agree with my colleague Mr. Brake. Partly because yes, I think there are the I think this is a really good story that is true about the the positive effects that some of the use of digital technology can have for children in some ages. Is this true for all of the kids, all of the time, everywhere? No.
But I think it's important for any regulation that is put in place to be able to consider and take into consideration the varying needs, the varying speeds of development that children at different ages have. Not every child is alike and not every situation of every child is alike. And I don't think that the EU level is the best place to regulate these spaces. Does that mean that every child should have a smartphone and social media in school? No, it doesn't.
And I think this is something that I also want to I want to thank the colleague Katarina Barley for to comment on the screen time. It's obviously screen time is an important factor and too much screen time can be harmful for children because it takes away time for children to to do other things that are really important for the development of that children. So would it be a good idea for schools to to prohibit to bring smartphones to school? Sure, I think it would be. That's my personal opinion.
Also, I want to make sure that there is a common understanding that there is a difference between the types of devices that we use. Smartphones are particularly bad for learning media literacy. They do not give you any access to understanding how the operating system works, how the internet technology works, they basically teach you how to push on colorful buttons and that's it basically. So there's a difference between computers and smartphones. Computers are good for learning and I have to disagree with the comparison with sex.
I think it would be a good idea. But that has nothing to do with banning banning accounts on social media.
You cannot learn coding if you don't have access to a computer. That does not work. And it's similar, let me just finish my sentence please. And that is similar for a lot of other important things that people learn on computers. Again, computers are different from smartphones.
And then very last point, in Australia, yes, it's only young, but the first statistics show that 60 to 80% of kids continue to be on social media at the moment because they circumvent it and they would circumvent a similar thing here. I mean, we've heard about VPNs, they can use parent different ways to circumvent. I stop here. But maybe just to clarify, there might have been a misunderstanding. EDRi's position is not that we shouldn't have rules.
We're very, very much in favor of rules to protect people, to protect fundamental rights. Absolutely agree with you there. Thank you.
Thank you very much. Sorry, I have to cut you but we are running over time and I think there's also an issue with translation at some point. Renate, please.
Renate Nikolay
Thank you very much. Let me use my kind of closing remarks for a couple of points. First, I don't think that we are extremely late and uncommitted with the enforcement of the DSA. I think I have clearly shown that we have a pipeline of cases, in particular with a focus on minor protection online, and to say that it's not having any effect, I think is a cutie of reality. Second, I think the debate shows that we need really to look at the things from the different angles.
Of course, there has to be a very strong focus on media literacy and education, also on what comes out of the expert panel. And of course, it's not done. We are kind of distracting from the real kind of issue of how to keep an online environment safe for minors if we only talk about the age gate. Because of course, there is a point that whether you're 14 or 16 or whatever age you have, if we decide for a harmonized approach on an age gating in the EU, then there is a vulnerability phase where the kids are still kids and not adults and where we still need to kind of ensure that we create a kind of, you know, a structure and a business model and clear rules that are more appropriate for that age. So my vision on what we can do out of the expert panel, but to be confirmed, is that we will not stop just with an age gate and an age verification app, but that we in that between time, building on the enforcement experience that we gain from the TikTok cases, the Meta cases and all the other cases, that we actually come clearer in what are the account settings, the recommender systems, the, you know, no addictive design features that we want for an age-appropriate design in that in that age phase where the kids are still kids and not adults.
So I just want to bring that in because I think, you know, if you limit it to age gating or not or age verification or not, it's a too limited space. Thank you.
Hubert.
Hubert Gambs
Thank you. Just on the on the question about the targeting advertising for minors. This is one of the options that we look at under under unfair personalization practices. And in the DSA, there is this this prohibition and we of course look whether we should also extend it to other to other operators that are not covered by by the DSA. And what of course is important, we know when the rules, when we have rules and when we will have complementary rules, then of course it's important that we that we enforce them.
And also here, we of course work very closely with all the other colleagues in the in the Commission to make sure that also our enforcement is effective and complementary to cover all different practices that are or will be prohibited. Thank you.
Anna Cavazzini
Thank you so much. So that concludes our panels on the protection of minors online in the single market. So thanks again for everyone. Hmm? She replied at the beginning.
Okay. What? Sorry. Okay. Again, thank you so much for everyone who participated, for the panelists, for the speakers, and for the members.
I think we have to definitely follow up, but we will discuss this amongst the coordinators. And the coordinators' meeting starts in five minutes here in the room. So everyone who is not a coordinator is invited to leave the room and the others I see you in five minutes.
Okay, dear colleagues, I suggest we start, because we're running already a little bit late. So everyone who is not supposed to be here has left the room, I guess. And everyone else can probably sit down so that we can start. You have all seen the agenda. If there's no remarks, the agenda is adopted.
Then I have some chair's announcements. First announcement is, it was actually Elena's birthday, so I want to congratulate her. And she doesn't go to South Korea, but she gets something from South Korea. Okay. You can all guess what it is.
No. Okay. So happy birthday. Then we come to some requests by the EUDS committee. They have some public hearings planned and they want to involve us.
One is one that they want to organize jointly with us. It's called Platform Power and Political Visibility: Impacts on Democratic Discourse. And the hearing would not last more than one hour and 30 and should take place during the EUDS meeting of 7th of December.
And then we also should be invited to two of their hearings. One is issues raised by bot farming and social media anonymity in elections on the 16th of November. And the other one is on challenges of the future of information environment. And this will has no date yet. So I just want to know if it's okay for you if we participate like EUDS suggested in those hearings, one jointly and the other one, the other two we will can go and are invited.
Is it okay for everyone or anybody has anything against it? Okay, if this is not the case, then fine. And then I was informed that EPP had the idea of inviting the Vatican or the Pope. Pablo, you want to propose this?
Pablo Arias Echeverría
Thank you very much, chair. Voy a hablar en español. Bueno, la idea es muy simple. Estamos hablando de inteligencia artificial y, por tanto, pues una de las cuestiones que hemos visto en los últimos tiempos ha sido la encíclica que ha sacado el Papa precisamente sobre inteligencia artificial y, por tanto, pues me parecía o nos parece que es interesante el poder escuchar y tener ese intercambio de opinión sobre esa encíclica, el porqué de esa encíclica. Yo creo que es un tema que podía ser interesante tener ese intercambio de opinión aquí en esta comisión.
Thank you so much. I think it's a brilliant idea because I think it's very important that we also discuss AI a little bit more long term and not only the AI Act, but a little bit or the bigger risks and the bigger ethical questions. Anybody against? Otherwise we would proceed and try to get the Vatican. The Pope might be difficult, but we can try to get his deputy or something.
I don't know how it works. I'm Protestant, so I don't know. Pablo?
Pablo Arias Echeverría
I don't really think that it's complicated to invite the Pope. The problem is that the complicated is the answer. He probably is not going to join us, but maybe he can send somebody just to speak about it that should be an expert.
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