{"id":446713,"date":"2026-03-04T17:33:51","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T16:33:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/2026\/03\/04\/la-commissione-approva-liniziativa-dei-cittadini-per-un-social-network-pubblico-europeo\/"},"modified":"2026-03-04T18:40:53","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T17:40:53","slug":"the-commission-approves-the-citizens-initiative-for-a-european-public-social-network","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2026\/03\/04\/the-commission-approves-the-citizens-initiative-for-a-european-public-social-network\/","title":{"rendered":"The Commission approves the citizens&#8217; initiative for a European public Social Network"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Brussels &#8211; A <strong>public social media platform at the European level<\/strong> that offers an alternative to existing commercial services.&nbsp; This is the European Citizens&#8217; Initiative (ECI) entitled <strong>&#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/citizens-initiative.europa.eu\/initiatives\/details\/2026\/000004_en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">European Public Social Network<\/a>&#8220;<\/strong>, which the European Commission officially registered today (4 March). The initiative envisages a social network designed as a service for society, financed by the community and subject to its supervision.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The main objectives are ambitious: the platform should remain impartial and independent of political pressure, while ensuring the protection of the rights of all citizens without distinction.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The Commission has declared the proposal legally admissible, confirming that it meets the formal criteria: it does not exceed the Commission&#8217;s powers, is not abusive, and does not conflict with the values of the Union. However, this registration does not yet constitute an assessment of the merits or a guarantee of future adoption.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The organisers have six months to start <strong>collecting signatures<\/strong>, which will last for one year. For the EU Commission to be obliged to respond and decide on what action to take, the initiative must collect at least <strong>1,000,000 statements of support<\/strong> from at least <strong>7 different Member States<\/strong>.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>In a context where young people aged&nbsp;<span style=\"margin: 0px;padding: 0px\">15 to 24 rely on social media as their primary source of information for social and political news (65 per cent<a href=\"https:\/\/europa.eu\/eurobarometer\/surveys\/detail\/3592\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">, according to Eurobarometer<\/a><\/span>), digital security and the fight against disinformation have long been a political priority on the European Commission&#8217;s agenda. Faced with what has been described as a <strong>&#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2026\/02\/03\/six-eu-countries-already-digitally-willing-to-take-action-against-social-networks-spain-will-also-propose-ban-for-children-under-16\/\">Digital Far West&#8221;<\/a><\/strong>, the European Union has already taken action: in July, the Commission launched the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2025\/07\/14\/the-eu-launches-an-online-age-verification-app-pilot-project-in-five-member-states-including-italy\/\">prototype for an <strong>age verification app<\/strong> <\/a>to protect minors from harmful content and addictive algorithms without violating their privacy, and five countries, including Italy, are now testing it. At the same time, what Spanish Prime Minister <strong>Pedro Sanchez <\/strong>has called a <strong>&#8220;coalition of digital willing&#8221;<\/strong> comprising six Member States is pushing to impose a minimum age limit of 16 for access to commercial platforms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Proposal for an alternative public platform to existing commercial services accepted<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7901,"featured_media":239725,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[25712],"tags":[31257,29362,26995,27863,29853],"class_list":["post-446713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general-news","tag-initiative-citizens-en","tag-disinformation-en","tag-social-media-en","tag-social-network-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7901"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=446713"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446713\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":446714,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446713\/revisions\/446714"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/239725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=446713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=446713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=446713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}