The Netherlands and Spain want one minimum age for social media across the EU

The Dutch and Spanish governments asked the European Commission on 11 September to set a single minimum age for social media across the EU, in ajoint paper published by the Netherlands. They want it written as an EU regulation that applies in every member state with only narrow national exceptions, rather than left to countries to legislate one at a time.

The paper names no age. Its second ask is the more unusual one: a European framework for independently assessing whether a platform is safe for children, with companies required to demonstrate that their services meet the standard. "We would not accept unsafe products for children in the physical world," the Dutch minister for digital economy and sovereignty, Aerdts, said. "The same should apply online."

On age checks, the two governments argue for verification that confirms only whether a user is over the threshold, without processing any other personal data. They also want work on safe alternative services built for children.

Why this matters here, outside the EU. The UK legislated first and alone, and the platforms named in our ban (Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and X) are the same ones an EU age limit would cover. The age-check systems UK children meet in spring 2027 will have been built for whichever market demanded the most, and a 27-country rule would be a far larger demand than a single national one. The design question is the sharper contrast, though. The UK ban sets a rule about who may hold an account. The Dutch and Spanish paper asks regulators to rule on whether the product is fit for children at all, which is a harder thing for a platform to satisfy by tightening its sign-up form.

Europe's country-by-country route has also proved fragile: France's under-15 ban wasstruck down by its Constitutional Council in August. Ursula von der Leyen sets out the Commission's priorities for the year ahead in herState of the Union address in Strasbourg on 16 September.