THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT REACHES A KEY AGREEMENT TO STRENGTHEN THE FIGHT AGAINST ONLINE CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE

The European Parliament and the Council of the EU have reached an important agreement on the responsibilities of the future European Centre for the Protection of Children against Sexual Abuse, a new EU agency that will play a key role in combating these crimes online. Reached during the sixth trilogue on 29 September, the agreement marks a decisive step forward in negotiations on the European regulation to combat child sexual abuse and will soon allow the process of selecting the new body’s headquarters to begin.

The Centre will become a European hub of specialist expertise and coordination. It will receive reports of suspected child sexual abuse material submitted by digital platforms, assess whether they are substantiated and forward them to the competent national authorities and Europol only where appropriate. It will thus act as a filter, helping to ease the workload of national authorities, which are already overwhelmed in some cases. It will also maintain a database of indicators to facilitate the identification of such material.

One of its most important functions will be to proactively search for both known and new child sexual abuse material on websites and other publicly accessible online spaces. This will enable action without relying exclusively on user complaints or reports from technology companies. The importance of this power is illustrated by figures from the UK’s Internet Watch Foundation: in 2024, 92% of the cases it acted upon originated from its own proactive searches.

These powers will be accompanied by strict safeguards to protect fundamental rights. Searches must be justified, targeted and non-discriminatory, documented and subject to regular audits. The Centre will establish procedures and safeguards in cooperation with the European Commission and the European Data Protection Supervisor and use technologies that meet the requirements of the Regulation. It will also have a fundamental rights officer, a Technology Committee and a Victims’ Consultative Forum, enabling victims’ experiences and needs to inform the agency’s work. The Centre will not have the power to order the direct removal of content: such decisions will remain subject to the procedures and safeguards laid down in the Regulation.

MEP Javier Zarzalejos, the European Parliament’s rapporteur for the Regulation, welcomed the agreement, which he regards as a fundamental step towards equipping the European Union with more effective tools to combat online child sexual abuse. He recalled that the co-legislators have already agreed virtually the entire Regulation over the six trilogues held so far and that negotiations are now focused on the voluntary and mandatory detection of child sexual abuse material. Parliament continues to work intensively with the Irish Presidency of the Council with the aim of securing an overall agreement on 8 December.