IWF urges EU to restore legal basis for voluntary CSAM detection
Digital platforms face growing pressure as IWF pushes for stronger EU child safety safeguards.
The Internet Watch Foundation has urged the EU policymakers to adopt a permanent legal framework allowing technology companies to voluntarily detect, report and remove child sexual abuse material online.
The organisation said Europe cannot keep relying on children to protect themselves from online predators, warning that awareness campaigns and digital literacy measures cannot replace platform responsibility, technical safeguards and proactive detection tools.
The IWF said the EU’s failure to agree on a long-term Child Sexual Abuse Regulation has created legal uncertainty after the expiry of the temporary framework that previously allowed online services to use voluntary detection measures.
According to the organisation, child sexual abuse increasingly begins online through grooming, coercion, sextortion and blackmail. The IWF said that more than a quarter of the 500,000 unique child sexual abuse images and videos it identified in 2025 were self-generated after children were manipulated into creating explicit material.
The group argues that voluntary detection should become a minimum standard across the EU, supported by legal safeguards that protect privacy and prevent misuse.
The debate remains one of the EU’s most contested digital policy issues. Child-safety organisations warn that legal uncertainty could reduce the detection of abuse, while privacy advocates have raised concerns about surveillance, false positives and the scanning of private communications.
The IWF said policymakers should not treat child protection and privacy as a binary choice, but should create a framework that allows technology companies to detect abuse while maintaining appropriate safeguards.
Why does it matter?
The debate goes to the heart of EU online safety policy: how to protect children from grooming, sextortion and the circulation of abuse material while preserving privacy and communications rights. The IWF’s intervention highlights the child-protection argument for legal certainty around voluntary detection tools. At the same time, the controversy shows why any permanent framework will need strong safeguards, transparency and limits on how detection technologies are used.
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