Brussels – More and more national governments are joining the crusade launched by French President Emmanuel Macron against children’s use of social networks. After France, Denmark, Greece, Austria, and Portugal, Spain has also “joined a coalition of the digitally willing”, announced Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez. Among the measures announced by the Prime Minister, Madrid intends to ban children under 16 from accessing social media.
Sanchez launched a harsh attack on social media platforms during his speech at the World Government Summit currently underway in Dubai. “Social networks have become a failed state, where laws are ignored, and crimes are tolerated,” said the socialist leader, before announcing five measures with which his government is declaring war on the abuses of large digital platforms. These include not only banning access to minors under 16, with platforms required to implement effective age-verification systems, but also making platform executives “legally liable” for failing to remove illegal content and establishing an ad hoc offence of algorithmic manipulation and amplification of illegal content.
Adapting the name given to the coalition of countries at the forefront of providing security guarantees to Ukraine, Sanchez spoke of a “coalition of digital willing”, which “will hold its first meeting in the coming days and will carry out coordinated actions at a multinational level“. The other member countries planning to tighten access to social media are, in different ways and at different times, France, Denmark, Greece, Austria, and Portugal.
Although the goal is the same, the six countries are so far moving in a fragmented manner. The French Parliament gave the initial green light last week to a bill that prohibits access to social networks for children under 15, the same age at which Athens and Copenhagen are working on. Vienna seems inclined to lower the minimum age for using social networks to 14, while the Portuguese government presented a draft law this week that would require parental consent for children under 16 to access social media.
The group of “willing” overlaps almost entirely with those who are testing an online age verification application launched in July by the European Commission. These are France, Spain, Greece, Denmark and Italy. This application will be customised at the national level and, according to the EU executive’s plans, will be available in app stores by March.
In Brussels, the issue of protecting minors from the risks of addiction, abuse, and exposure to harmful content online has been on the table for some time: the Digital Services Act, in force from February 2024, obliges large platforms to assess the dangers to young people and put in place effective tools to prevent them. Now, however, there are calls to go further: in November, the European Parliament approved a non-legislative resolution proposing to establish a minimum age of 16 across Europe for unrestricted access to social networks, while allowing access to children aged 13 to 16 with parental consent.
So far, the European Commission has always rejected the possibility of imposing a digital age at the EU level because, as established by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), this remains an exclusive national competence. The EU executive’s prerogative is to monitor compliance with the obligations imposed by the Digital Services Act. The DSA requires platforms to implement effective age-verification tools to ensure compliance with applicable national laws.
The European Commission’s spokesperson for digital affairs, Thomas Regnier, explained that Brussels is testing and customising an age verification application because, once it is ready, platforms “will simply have to accept our age verification tool, and with it the criteria for access to social networks automatically defined because they will have been customised in the 27 member countries.” Platforms “will not be obliged to use it, but if they decide not to, they will be obliged to prove that their alternative is at least as effective as ours.”
The feeling is that the European Commission is struggling to keep up with national capitals’ initiatives. In September 2025, Ursula von der Leyen announced the establishment of a panel of experts dedicated to analysing the impact of social media on minors and the necessary actions to be taken. The risk is that of a fragmentation of the digital market, with some countries imposing (different) minimum ages for access to social networks and others not. Which law would apply to a 15-year-old Spaniard on holiday in Italy? “We don’t know yet, the Commission is still examining the issue,” said the spokesperson, throwing up his hands.
English version by the Translation Service of Withub
