The European Commission has decided to put a temporary stop to a number of national social media age verification laws in the works in several EU member countries.
But it’s not because of the privacy and free speech disasters that the laws create. The reason, as explained by the EU’s executive arm, is to give priority to its own, EU-wide age verification law, the EU KIDS Act.
The notification procedure is a formal one in the EU, where a country that wants to pass a law that may affect the single market is required to inform the Commission, which then has three months to react; and if it decides to, it can postpone that law for another 12 months. On October 29, the Commission did just that for Austria’s draft that wants to ban under-14s from using social media. Austria had submitted its proposal on July 28.
Flanders, a region in Belgium, had its decree blocked as well, after submitting it on August 28.
The Commission wants to go for an even more comprehensive, all-encompassing solution, that will cover the whole bloc.
Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier said, “we will not fragment our internal market.”
He added that the Commission “has decided to postpone for 12 months any draft national laws overlapping with the future harmonized rules.”
What the EU KIDS Act proposes is not exactly a “harmonization” of existing rules, but rather a massive expansion of age verification schemes, to cover all users, not just children.
The proposal says that platforms will have to check the age of every user, using an age verification solution certified by a public authority, with the EU digital identity wallet counted as one. Platforms will have six months to check the age of existing users and disable accounts of those found to be under 15, or whose age “cannot be established” – that is, those using anonymous and pseudonymous accounts.
This is the part that affects all internet users, and the scope is broad: app stores, operating systems, social media, video-sharing platforms, online games, AI companions, and general-purpose AI chatbots – as long as they are seen as a “risk” to minors’ privacy, safety, or security. Adults who don’t submit to age verification will be treated as children and given access only to the child version of the service.
The EU Commission’s own attempt to develop an age verification app was hacked in under two minutes by security consultant Paul Moore, as Reclaim The Net reported. At the time, the Commission downplayed the incident, saying that the app was merely a “demo version.”
Meanwhile, public feedback on the KIDS Act is open until December 3, 2026.
Not all EU member countries will be waiting for the EU KIDS Act to be passed and implemented. Greece’s under-15 law was submitted for the Commission’s review long before the EU proposal was made, so it was not frozen. The law passed the parliament on October 22 and will come into force on January 1, 2027.
The Commission said that the standstill period for Greece and France had “elapsed before our Kids Act proposal was made.” France’s under-15 law was passed on July 21, 2026, but the country’s Constitutional Council blocked it on August 14. A revised version of the law is expected to be presented and it should escape the freeze.
Greece’s Minister of State Akis Skertsos said that “Greece is the first and only country in the EU implementing restrictions to protect minors over the next 12 months.”
In Greece, platforms will have to submit their plans for age checks by early December. One of the options that is being considered is to flag users who are likely to be minors by monitoring their behavior and interactions on the platform, and then request that they confirm their age by uploading an ID document or through a video call. Two digital “wallets” – the state’s Kids Wallet and Gov.gr Wallet – are also being promoted as a means to verify age.
A number of countries whose laws have been put on ice are not happy about it, but the reason is not that they care about privacy and the right to anonymity of internet users of all ages – it’s because they want to rush headlong into introducing these schemes on the national level.
Austria’s Deputy Interior Minister Alexander Pröll said, “It is unacceptable for Brussels to prevent member states from enacting national laws without presenting a comprehensive European solution of its own.”
Denmark’s Digitalization Minister Christina Egelund said she was “disappointed and bewildered” by the announcement. Denmark will now ask the Commission to allow it to proceed with introducing an under-15 age limit that is supposed to kick in on July 1, 2027, and Egelund said she would withdraw it once EU rules come into force.
Poland is not taking the Commission’s decision to heart and is pushing ahead with its own under-15 bill, drafted by two ministries and due to be approved by the government in the first quarter of 2027.
It is unclear how the Commission’s move will affect Germany, where the cabinet approved the principles of an under-13 rule on October 14, as a stopgap until the EU law is in place. The country plans to introduce an age-check app in 2027. Slovakia’s government approved an under-16 plan on August 26, while Portugal notified an under-15 law on September 28. Cyprus approved an under-15 action plan on September 16. In Italy, Senate Bill 1136 is still in the Senate.
A senior Commission official estimated that the EU KIDS Act will not be implemented until well into 2028, since it still has to be agreed by the Parliament and EU member countries.
This means that the fight in Brussels is not about whether to introduce more and more age verification schemes, but who will be in charge of this process. The goal is to have one law, one credential, and 27 countries adhering to it – and the current “freeze” is nothing but a waiting room for that to happen.
