Open letter on DSA enforcement on children's rights
Eurochild and 5Rights joined forces with 5 Members of the European Parliament and 25 civil society organisations working in the digital world across the European Union to call on the European Commission to ensure Very Large Online Platforms duly fulfil their obligations to assess and mitigate risks to children on their platforms under the Digital Services Act (DSA).
This first round of DSA risk assessment reports is a significant milestone in the implementation of the DSA. However, the latest risk assessment reports show several shortcomings that limit their effectiveness in shaping an age-appropriate environment for children online. This is mainly due to scattered structures, a lack of ambition in mitigation measures, and little emphasis on key aspects such as children’s privacy or design choices
When carried out thoroughly, transparently and through a child-rights lens, the risk assessment, mitigation and audit exercises could provide useful information to enable regulators, researchers, and civil society to hold online platforms accountable for their duty of care towards children. But this is only possible when these exercises are scrutinised by external auditors and monitored by civil society.
Following on the European Commission’s Political Guidelines 2024 - 2029 commitment to implement and enforce the DSA, we call on the Commission to provide concrete guidance on the detail level and structure of risk assessments.
