Ensuring a robust legal framework is essential to combatting child sexual abuse online. Legislative instruments play a vital role in establishing consistent and uniform rules across EU Member States, providing legal certainty for all actors involved as well as safeguarding the protection of fundamental rights at stake.
The main legislative instruments (existing and proposed) to prevent and combat child sexual abuse are:
- Proposal for a Regulation to prevent and combat child sexual abuse
- Interim Regulation
- Recast of Directive 2011/93/EU to strengthen criminal law on child sexual abuse (including information on Proposal for the extension of the Interim Regulation)
Proposal for a Regulation to prevent and combat child sexual abuse
On 11 May 2022, the Commission proposed a Regulation on preventing and combatting the sexual abuse and sexual exploitation of children to require online services providers to detect and report child sexual abuse material and grooming. This new legislation aims to help EU countries detect and report child sexual abuse online, prevent it from taking place and support victims of child sexual abuse.
The new rules will safeguard children by establishing:
- mandatory risk assessments
- targeted detection obligations (based on a detection order)
- stronger safeguards concerning detection.
- clear reporting obligations
- effective removal of forbidden content
- lower risks of exposing children to grooming
- solid oversight mechanisms and judicial redress
A new independent EU Centre on Child Sexual Abuse (EU Centre) will facilitate the efforts of service providers by acting as a hub of expertise, providing reliable information on identified material, receiving and analysing service provider inputs to avoid erroneous reports from reaching law enforcement, swiftly forwarding relevant reports for law enforcement action and by providing support to victims.
The regulation is currently being negotiated by the Council and the European Parliament; the European Parliament adopted its position on the proposal on 16 November 2023.
Learn more about the proposed legislation on the Frequently Asked Questions.
Interim Regulation
On 14 July 2021 the Commission adopted an interim Regulation to allow providers of electronic communications services to continue their voluntary practices to detect child sexual abuse in their systems beyond 21 December 2020. The interim Regulation puts in place a temporary and strictly limited derogation from the application of some provisions of the e-Privacy Directive, with the aim of detecting, reporting and removing child sexual abuse. This legislation, which was initially set to expire on 3 August 2024, has been extended until 3 April 2026, to ensure that there is no legal gap in the voluntary detection of child sexual abuse online until a more permanent solution is put in place.
The interim Regulation requires providers to communicate to the Commission the names of organisations acting in the public interest to which they report online child sexual abuse. They are also obliged to submit a report on the processing of personal data under this Regulation. According to the information received by the Commission, online service providers report to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC).
To communicate the required information, or ask for more information, please use the address: HOME-FIGHT-AGAINST-CSA
ec [dot] europa [dot] eu (HOME-FIGHT-AGAINST-CSA[at]ec[dot]europa[dot]eu).
EU Member States are required to make publicly available and submit to the Commission reports with statistics referring to online child sexual abuse on an annual basis.
Recast of Directive 2011/93/EU to strengthen criminal law
On 6 February 2024, the Commission proposed a recast of Directive EU 2011/93 to strengthen criminal law on child sexual abuse and sexual exploitation. The revised rules expand the definitions of offences, seeking to harmonize these definitions among Member States. For example, these new offences include livestreaming of child sexual abuse and the possession and exchange of paedophile manuals. The proposal introduces higher penalties for the perpetuators of abuse and will set a longer time period during which victims can report the sexual abuse they suffered and seek action against the offender.
The proposal for a recast also sets out standards and obligations for Member States on prevention programmes and assistance and support measures for victims. This Directive complements the regulation put forward by the Commission in May 2022 to prevent and combat child sexual abuse online.
In 2019, the Commission opened infringements procedures against 23 EU countries for non-compliance with implementing the directive. The infringement procedures followed the publication of two reports (report 1 & report 2) showing that the Directive had not been fully implemented in EU Member States. Since then, most infringement procedures have been closed, after having addressed the concerns identified. The Commission is cooperating closely with the Member States against which infringement procedures are still open to address the few outstanding issues.