European Commission proposes new legislation to combat CSAM online

The European Commission introduces new legislation to tackle online child sexual abuse material (CSAM). This legislation mandates service providers to detect, report, and remove such content. The rules include measures for risk assessment, targeted detection, reporting obligations, material removal, and reducing grooming. An independent Center on Child Sexual Abuse will assist service providers, aid law enforcement, provide victim support, and act as a knowledge base for member states.

The commission also  proposed new EU legislation that aims to  prevent and combat child sexual abuse online. The proposed rules will madate service providers to detect, report and remove child sexual abuse material (CSAM) from their networks.

To protect children online from sexual abuse and prevent CSAM material from reappearing, the rules propose: mandatory risk assessment and risk mitigation measures; targeted detection obligations, based on a detection order; ensuring strong safeguards on detection; mandatory reporting obligations; effective removal of CSAM material;  reducing exposure to grooming and  strong oversight mechanism and judicial redressal.

The legislation proposed to set up an  independent EU Centre on Child Sexual Abuse (EU Centre), that will work as a hub to  facilitate online service providers to comply with the new obligations; support National Law enforcement with relevant information for effective action and to provide support to victims; serving as a knowledge base to member states and helping victims by facilitating take down of abuse material.