That must follow a serious effort by the EU to tackle illegal and harmful content on social media, he said, which hasn’t happened yet. “We haven’t remotely tried hard enough yet to ensure effective oversight of the platforms.”
The human rights chief praised the EU’s digital laws as world-leading, including the Digital Services Act, which seeks to protect kids from systemic risks on online platforms — but said it wasn’t being policed strongly enough.
“We have a very piecemeal enforcement of the Digital Services Act and the other relevant rulebook right across Europe. It’s very much dependent on the goodwill and the capacity of the different governments to be serious about it,” he said. Governments have “an uneven record” in that regard, he said.
EU countries must make sure they have exhausted all other solutions before heading for the extreme measures of bans, he said. “I don’t see much sign of that effort.”
Still, Denmark, Spain and Greece are among the EU countries heading toward bans, although they are on vastly different timelines.
The European Commission, in charge of enforcing the DSA on large social media platforms, is considering its own measures. Countries like Greece have called on the Commission to go forth with an EU-wide ban to avoid fragmentation across the bloc.
President Ursula von der Leyen has convened a panel of experts to advise her on next steps, which is expected to give its results by the summer.