Ireland Puts Age Verification at the Centre of Its EU Council Presidency

Ireland will assume the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union on 1 July 2026, and has named online child safety and age verification among the defining priorities of its six-month term. Unveiling the programme at Dublin Castle on 10 June, Taoiseach Micheál Martin said the State would “work with others to make sure that Europe’s children are safe online”, calling it “the public health issue of our time”.

Asked what the public could expect by the end of the presidency, Martin pointed to “far greater protection for children online”, adding that “age verification will be a key factor of that”, according to the Irish Times. The programme commits Ireland to pushing for an EU-level decision on a “digital age of majority” and to advancing age-verification mechanisms across the bloc. Martin called the six-month window a “challenging timeline” for an under-16 social media ban, but said the Government hopes to advance it.

The move follows Australia’s under-16 account ban, the EU-level minimum-age debate, and the UK’s parallel move on “high-risk” apps, while the G7 has agreed a first-of-its-kind joint approach to online child safety that puts age assurance centre stage. Dublin wants to lean on digital identity tools, including the EU Digital Identity (EUDI) Wallet, to verify age while sharing as little personal data as possible. The weakness of any new rule must close is the self-declared date of birth that most platforms still rely on, and meeting regulators’ expectations means verifying age accurately while collecting minimal sensitive data, a balance that conventional ID-upload flows handle poorly.

Shufti’s age verification solution combines facial biometric age estimation with document verification, is certified by Germany’s KJM age-assurance body, and is built with EUDI Wallet and eIDAS 2.0 readiness in mind. As Europe’s first iBeta Level 3 certified liveness provider, Shufti is positioned to help platforms meet emerging age-assurance obligations.

Request a demo to see how layered age assurance works in practice.