Law note · European Union
Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD), Articles 6a and 28b
Requires member states to ensure audiovisual media services and video sharing platforms take appropriate measures, such as age verification tools, parental controls, and restricted broadcast times, so that content that may impair minors' physical, mental, or moral development is not normally seen or heard by them, with the strictest measures required for the most harmful content such as gratuitous violence and pornography.
Also bars processing minors' personal data for profiling or behaviourally targeted advertising. Member states had to transpose the 2018 amendments by 19 September 2020; national regulators, including France's Arcom, cite this directive as the legal basis for requiring pornography age verification, with specific national enforcement actions recorded in each jurisdiction's own file rather than here.
Primary source: official directive text, EUR-Lex