Law introduced to combat child abuse online

BRUSSELS - "Today we are proposing legislation that will allow Europe to be at the forefront of the fight against online sexual violence. The Council of Europe says that one in five children are victims of sexual abuse and only in 2021 were they posted online 85 million images and videos showing these abuses. We are not protecting our children and we cannot continue. To the perpetrators of these crimes I say: Europe will hunt you down ".

This was stated

, presenting the

.

The package represents the "digital arm" of the EU strategy on the protection of children's rights.

"The current system based on identification and voluntary reporting by companies has proved insufficient to adequately protect minors and, in any case, will no longer be possible once the interim solution currently in force has expired", notes the Commission. .

"Up to 95% of all reports of child sexual abuse received in 2020 were from a single company, although it is clearly demonstrated that the problem does not exist on just one platform," it said in a statement.

To counter this scourge, the new rules, if approved, will force digital companies to "identify",

with systems similar to those already in use to combat spam and malaware, "report" and "remove" the child pornography material present in their services.

Suppliers will then have to "assess and mitigate" the risk of abuse of their services and the measures adopted will have to be "proportionate to this risk and subject to solid conditions and safeguards"

At the heart of the proposal is the

, independent but hosted by Europol, with which it will coordinate.

"The Member States, according to the European bill - will have to designate the national authorities in charge of reviewing the risk assessment. If these authorities determine that a significant risk remains, they can ask a court or an independent national authority to issue an order for detection for known or new material of child sexual abuse or grooming. "

Suppliers must then "employ technologies that are as least invasive as possible for privacy, in accordance with the state of the art in the sector, and that limit the error rate of false positives as much as possible".

"The amount of child pornography that circulates on the web is astonishing. And, shamefully, Europe is the