Brussels, 3 February 2026
On 3 February 2026, the EU Commission, Austrialia’s eSafety Commissioner and UK Ofcom’s cooperation group on age assurance discussed insights into the implementation of the Australian age restrictions for social media. This was the first meeting following the Joint communication signed in November 2025, where the three regulators agreed to advance together on child safety online.
During the meeting, the eSafety Commissioner provided an update on the enforcement of the social media age restrictions in Australia, which has already seen platforms remove access to around 4.7 million accounts identified as belonging to children under 16 in Australia. The European Commission and Ofcom, in turn, shared their respective work on age-assurance measures in the context of protection of minors online, including ongoing regulatory and policy developments.
Throughout 2026, the three regulators will continue to have regular exchanges to further explore effective age-assurance approaches, enforcement against adult platform services and other providers to ensure minors are protected, relevant technological developments, and the essential role of data access and independent research in supporting effective regulatory action.
Find more information about the EU approach to age verification.
Source – EU Commission
The EU approach to age verification
The European Commission is working towards an EU-harmonised approach to age verification.
To help online platforms implement a user-friendly and privacy-preserving age verification method, the Commission is developing a harmonised approach across the EU in close collaboration with the Member States.
This initiative aims to allow EU users to prove they are old enough to access legally age restricted sites, starting with being over 18 years of age for accessing adult-restricted online content, such as pornography, gambling, purchasing alcohol, and others. It is a key step in supporting the implementation of the Digital Services Act.
Age Verification Blueprint
The Commission made a blueprint for an age verification solution available on 14 July 2025. It allows users to prove they are over 18 without sharing any other personal information. Apart from being privacy-preserving, it is user-friendly and fully interoperable with future EU Digital Identity Wallets.
The solution can also be easily adapted to prove other age ranges, for example 13+. The age verification blueprint will set a standard in terms of privacy and user-friendliness.
A second blueprint for an age verification solution was published on 10 October 2025, offering onboarding using passports and ID cards, as well as support for the Digital Credentials API.
Also called the ‘mini wallet’, the solution is built on the same technical specifications as the European Digital Identity Wallets that are to be rolled out by the end of 2026. This ensures compatibility and enables the integration of the age verification functionality in the future Wallets.
This solution comes in the form of a software solution that will now enter a pilot phase of testing with Member States, online platforms, end users and other interested parties, such as software solutions providers, for uptake by the market.
Member States testing the app will be able to customise it, for example, through translation into national language(s). The technical specifications, source code and a beta release of the solution are already published. The age verification blueprint is an open-source implementation of these specifications. It can be easily customised by app publishers, without the possibility, however, to change the privacy-preserving features. The design and development of this solution is supported by a contract awarded to T-Scy (Scytales and T-Systems).