Capitals cool on Brussels age-check app 

BRUSSELS — National capitals are skeptical and even downright dismissive of a new application created by the European Commission to check the age of internet users, government ministers and officials told POLITICO. 

The EU executive on Wednesday will recommend that countries use an app it designed to protect kids from online harms, as governments roll out age checks for illegal content such as pornography, alcohol — and, likely soon, social media. 

But government officials from eight member countries told POLITICO they are unsure, reluctant and even unwilling to adopt the EU app. Many said they preferred their own national solutions instead. 

The rollout of the EU app has been rocky, with hackers finding holes in the software just hours after the Commission declared it “technically ready” earlier this month. 

The pushback shows how sensitive the issue of verifying people’s age on the internet has become, as Brussels tries to come up with bloc-wide rules to protect minors.  

Ireland, France and Poland prefer their own existing applications to the EU one, officials said in responses to POLITICO. Germany’s digital ministry told local media it doesn’t plan to roll out the app. Finland was “not actively implementing” the EU app, its finance ministry said in a statement, while Willemijn Aerdts, digital minister of the Netherlands, said in a statement that her ministry was “carefully assessing” whether the EU app was “safe, privacy-friendly and difficult to circumvent.” 

Greece’s Digital Minister Dimitris Papastergiou said in an interview that if the EU released one app and told EU capitals to use only that one, Athens would comply, but added that he considers it unlikely that Brussels will mandate the use of a single app.  

Greek Digital Minister Dimitris Papastergiou talks to the media prior the start of an EU telecom ministers’ meeting in Brussels on Dec. 5, 2025. | Thierry Monasse/Getty Images)

Estonia’s Justice and Digital Affairs Minister Liisa Pakosta said in a statement that the cybersecurity and privacy concerns raised earlier in April “are a red flag and further reduce the already unlikely prospect of Estonia adopting a similar solution for its citizens.” (Estonia doesn’t support the push toward social media bans enforced by age verification, arguing they are easy to bypass and ultimately don’t tackle online harms.) 

The Commission previously brushed off the security vulnerabilities, saying the app was only a demonstration version and that the code would continue to be updated before anything was released. 

Digital ID kerfuffle 

The app the Commission issued this month is the latest hiccup in a years-long effort to get tech apps up and running to check the age of internet users.  

Brussels and EU member capitals have already spent two years working on “digital identity wallets,” which should be available across Europe by the end of 2026.  

But the EU executive announced last July it would roll out a “mini-wallet” designed to help tech platforms check the age of their users, as worries mounted about the impact of social media on the health of children. The mini-wallet was meant to come out before the broader digital ID apps; it’s the one the Commission showcased in mid-April and is officially recommending to countries this week.  

Countries that were already working on their own digital ID apps, like Denmark, France, Greece and Spain, were selected to be frontrunners in testing the mini-wallet.  

According to Poland’s Digital Affairs State Secretary Dariusz Standerski, the new app is “secondary” and “complementary” to the broader digital ID wallet the country has been working on. That wallet “will always be the primary way” to verify people’s age online, he said in an interview.

The Commission’s tech architecture underlying the app is designed to ensure that national applications will work together with the European Union’s own app.

It doesn’t matter if “there’s two, three, five or ten apps. There will be many wallets,” Greece’s Papastergiou said.  

Emile Marzolf and Larissa Kögl contributed to this report.