The Prime Minister of Spain, Pedro Sánchez, announced on Tuesday 3 February: Madrid is preparing to ban access to several online platforms by minors under the age of 16, following in the footsteps of France, which recently passed a bill to this effect.
Risks such as “addiction, abuse, pornography, manipulation, violence... cannot be accepted”, said the Prime Minister. Platforms will also be required to implement effective age verification systems.
However, certain changes could conflict with the European Digital Services Act. As in France, the effective ban on minors accessing social media is legal, but a national government cannot penalise platforms that have not put in place a viable mechanism to ensure this. This falls within the remit of the Commission (see EUROPE 13795/6).
The question of banning young people from the media has become a highly political issue in recent months, but is struggling to be implemented technically and collectively at European level. The EU27 are divided on this issue (see EUROPE 13728/1). (Original version in French by Isalia Stieffatre)