Combating child sexual abuse, both offline and online, is among the main priorities on the current EU agenda and one of the objectives of the new EU Security Union strategy for 2020-2025. In July 2020, the European Commission adopted the EU strategy for a more effective fight against child sexual abuse (COM/2020/607 final), setting out eight initiatives aimed at fully implementing and developing the EU legal framework, identifying remaining gaps, strengthening the law enforcement response, enhancing prevention, involving industry and supporting international multi-stakeholder cooperation.

As part of the strategy to combating child sexual abuse more effectively, the Commission announced a series of measures, including new legislation requiring online communication services (i.e. instant messaging platforms and applications) to detect, report and remove child sexual abuse material and an assessment of the implementation of Directive 2011/93/EU on combating the sexual abuse and sexual exploitation of children and child pornography, EU key instrument in the field.

The Commission launched in September 2021 a REFIT initiative to assess the implementation of Directive 2011/93/EU and identify legislative gaps, best practice and priority actions at EU level, wit a view to possibly preparing a proposal to review the Directive. The public consultation period run from 20 April 2022 to 13 July 2022.

A proposal for revision of the combating child sexual abuse Directive is now planned to be adopted in the fourth quarter of 2023. The revision is one of the key new initiatives for 2023 listed in Commission President von der Leyen’s State of the Union 2022 Letter of Intent addressed to European Parliament President Roberta Metsola, and in the Commission's Work Programme for 2023.

Pending the proposal, the Commission  decided on 15 February 2023 to send additional letters of formal notice to 12 EU MS - Belgium, Bulgaria, Latvia, Luxembourg, Hungary, Malta, Austria, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Finland - for failure to correctly transpose all the requirements of the fight against child sexual abuse directive.

See also our files ‘EU Strategy for a more effective fight against child sexual abuse’; 'e-Privacy Directive: Derogation to combat child sexual abuse online'; 'Combating child sexual abuse online: new legislation" and 'Strengthening of Europol's mandate' in the same train.

References:

• Directive 2011/93/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 December 2011 on combating the sexual abuse and sexual exploitation of children and child pornography, and replacing Council Framework Decision 2004/68/JHA
• European Commission, REFIT initiative - Combating child sexual abuse – review of EU rules, September 2021
• State of the Union 2022 Letter of intent, 14.9.2022
• European Commission, Commission Work Programme 2023 and annexes, 18.10.2022
• European Commission, February infringements package: key decisions, 15.2.2023

Related files in the same train:

• Legislative train on the EU Strategy for a more effective fight against child sexual abuse for the period 2020-2025.
• Legislative train on the Proposal for a Regulation on a temporary derogation from certain provisions of the e-Privacy Directive for the purpose of combating child sexual abuse online (e-Privacy Directive: Derogation to combat child sexual abuse)
• Legislative train on New legislation to fight child sexual abuse online (Combating child sexual abuse online)
• Legislative train on the strengthening of Europol's mandate

Author: Ingeborg Odink, Members' Research Service, legislative-train@europarl.europa.eu