Romania’s Senate has adopted a bill that would bar children under 15 from using online social networks and require platforms to verify users’ ages with methods recognized at the European Union level. The bill was adopted tacitly on Nov. 2, after the Senate’s deadline for debating and voting on it expired, and now goes to the Chamber of Deputies, which has the final say.
Under Romania’s procedure, a bill is considered adopted by the first chamber when the constitutional deadline passes without an explicit plenary vote. The Senate action comes after the European Commission decided in October to postpone national laws that overlap with planned EU-wide rules on minors’ access to social media.
“Access to an online social network service provided through an online platform is prohibited to minors who have not reached the age of 15,” the bill states. Platform providers would have to take all necessary measures to prevent under-15s from accessing and using their services, and implement effective age verification that respects privacy and personal data protection law. The verification mechanisms must be based on solutions recognized at the EU level or comply with guidelines issued under the Digital Services Act. “A purely declarative statement of the user’s age is not considered sufficient,” the text says.
Users aged 15 to 18 would not face a ban, but platforms would have to give them progressive, age-appropriate access through differentiated settings and safety measures switched on by default. Providers would also have to limit systemic risks for this group, including addictive design features, exposure to gambling or gambling-like mechanisms, sexually explicit content, and extreme or violent material.
For all users under 18, platforms would have to switch off profiling-based targeted advertising and direct messages from users outside a list of approved connections by default. Minors’ accounts would be private by default, and platforms would have to activate tools for controlling time spent on the service, with periodic notifications.
Breaches would be treated as administrative offenses. Providers that are not designated as very large online platforms under the Digital Services Act could be fined between 0.5 percent and 2 percent of their global annual turnover for the previous financial year, or have their services suspended in Romania. A suspension could only be ordered by a court at the request of ANCOM, the national communications regulator, for serious, repeated and persistent violations, and only when compliance measures and fines have proved insufficient to protect minors.
Sources: Agerpres, Digi24, Fakti
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By the ID Tech Editorial Team
