The European telecommunications and digital affairs ministers are meeting in Luxembourg on Friday 6 June for the Telecommunications Council, with the aim of adopting two texts on European cybersecurity (see EUROPE 13653/12) and network infrastructure resilience (see EUROPE 13653/11).
Detailed in our pages, these two documents constitute the main topic of this meeting. A dozen other items are also on the agenda, as well as an exchange of views on satellite connectivity.
Six countries - France, Greece, Spain, Cyprus, Denmark and Slovenia - are expected to take the floor to address the issue of protecting minors online, and in particular the question of an age limit for access to social networks.
Paris, Madrid and Athens recently co-signed a working document entitled ‘Protecting Minors from Online harms and risks: Age verification, age-appropriate design and a pan-European digital age of majority’, which calls on the EU to make it “imperative [to] establish in Europe the principle of a digital-age majority for online social networks” (see EUROPE 13643/10).
The issue of protecting minors online is a “major priority” for the European Commission, according to Commissioner for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy Henna Virkkunen, who welcomes the possibility of a European approach to the question of an age limit. The Commission is expected to officially adopt its guidelines for protecting minors online “in July” (see EUROPE 13639/18).
Another point of discussion is expected to concern the legislative simplification envisaged in the digital field. According to news service MLex, the Commission and the Polish Presidency of the EU Council are considering pausing the implementation process for the legislative act on artificial intelligence due to a backlog in the development of technical standards and the code of practice for general-purpose AI models (see EUROPE 13634/7). (Original version in French by Isalia Stieffatre)