Children under 15 in Greece will be barred from social media from January 1, 2027, under a law passed by the Greek parliament, and platforms will be able to check users’ ages through the government’s Kids Wallet app. The law also allows age checks through the age-verification function of Greece’s digital document wallet.
The vote follows the bill’s submission earlier this month, when Papastergiou described a process in which a platform would show a QR code for the user to scan with Kids Wallet. During the debate, Digital Governance and Artificial Intelligence Minister Dimitris Papastergiou said the app tells a platform only whether the user is above or below 15, without passing on the child’s personal details or even their date of birth.
He said Kids Wallet follows a code and technical specifications that Europe set last summer. He also told parliament that from January 1, platforms will have to check whether the accounts they hold and the services they provide are aimed at adults.
The law uses a calendar-year rule: January 1 counts as the birth date of everyone born in the same year, so children are treated as turning 15 at the start of the year in which they reach that age.
Papastergiou compared the measure with Greece’s restrictions on selling alcohol and tobacco to minors, which also rely on Kids Wallet checks, saying those rules had reduced such sales within the first months. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said social media companies had about two and a half months to build a system that verifies users’ ages while protecting their privacy.
The National Council for Radio and Television and the Hellenic Data Protection Authority will supervise compliance. The law will automatically stop applying if the EU adopts a regulation on the same issue, and Greece is among seven EU countries working with the European Commission on an age-verification solution.
Only the governing New Democracy party voted for the bill in principle. PASOK abstained, while Syriza, Greek Solution, the Communist Party, Niki and Course of Freedom voted against it after a plenary debate lasting more than 16 hours.
Sources: Hellenic Parliament, ERT News, Kathimerini
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By the Mobile ID World Editorial Team
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