Commission welcomes political agreement on criminal law rules to fight child sexual abuse

The Commission welcomes yesterday’s political agreement with the European Parliament and Council on the Directive updating the criminal law rules on child sexual abuse and sexual exploitation. Worrisome trends like the proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI)-generated abuse material make today’s agreement even more timely.

This Directive addresses new challenges, improves investigation and prosecution, strengthens prevention and assistance to victims and promotes better coordination in the fight against child sexual abuse. The key points of the new common rules are: updated definitions, new offences reflecting modern realities, reinforced rules on prevention and stronger support for victims.

The digital threat of child sexual abuse has evolved significantly over the past years. The current EU rules in this area were agreed in 2011, and had to be adapted to address the revolution in the digital world that took place since. Reports of child sexual abuse online increased from one million in 2010 to more than 23 million in 2025. These reports contained 61.8 million files, including 29.4 million images and 26.3 million videos. Data also show an exponential increase of online solicitation of children (grooming), with the number of reports increasing by more than 30 times in the last 5 years.

This Directive represents a significant achievement. However, it will only be effective if we are able to identify offenders. Today, up to 80% of criminal investigations into child sexual abuse are launched because of reports of images and videos of such abuse from online service providers. It is therefore essential that the co-legislators urgently reach an agreement on rules for such reports that effectively prevent and combat child sexual abuse online.

More information is available in the press release online.