Received by our editorial team and republished from Il Giorno, Milan edition, dated 24/07/2026, authored by JESSICA MULLER CASTAGLIUOLO (read the original article at: Il Giorno – Milano, Cronaca)
Antonio Affinita, spokesperson for the movement suing Meta and TikTok: “There are at least four critical flaws in the French legislation, from the failure to explicitly set out obligations for platforms to the impossibility of implementing a reliable age-verification mechanism”
France is the first European nation to ban social media use for minors under the age of 15. However, the law has sparked fierce debate regarding its enforcement. The issue is equally pressing in Italy, where numerous families have joined Moige's class action—the Italian parents' movement—bringing Meta and TikTok before the Milan Enterprise Court. Yet even for those who fight against the predatory designs and hypnotic algorithms of social networks, the French law, despite carrying significant political weight, remains “technically and legally unstable”.
This is because, as the parents' committee points out, there is currently no standalone sanctioning mechanism, nor any realistic means of verifying age.
Antonio Affinita, you are the director and spokesperson of Moige. You lead this fight against the web giants, yet you find this law completely inadequate?
“Indeed. In our view, it suffers from structural weaknesses that French and European consultative bodies had already flagged during the legislative process.”
Such as?
“Our legal analysis reveals at least four points that simply do not hold up. The first is its incompatibility with European law, specifically the Digital Services Act (DSA), which restricts Member States from imposing direct, additional obligations on platforms. In practice, the French law merely states that 'access is prohibited to minors under 15' without explicitly placing binding requirements on the platforms themselves. It is a legal sleight of hand: France declares contracts between minors and platforms null and void, thus circumventing a direct prohibition, but effectively establishing an indirect age-verification requirement that inevitably clashes with the harmonised framework of the DSA.”
So platforms cannot be mandated, let alone sanctioned, by France?
“Precisely. A viable enforcement and sanctioning mechanism is entirely missing. The law strips governmental bodies of the power to enforce compliance measures on failing platforms. This creates a regulatory vacuum: for major non-European platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, or Snapchat, sanctioning jurisdiction ultimately defaults to the European Commission via the DSA, rather than a French national authority. France has passed a law whose enforcement will hinge upon other Member States' authorities or the Commission. In other words, the country enacted a ban without possessing the coercive tools to enforce it autonomously.”
So who verifies age?
“That remains completely unclear. Even granting the regulation full European legitimacy, an unresolved technical hurdle persists: there is currently no age-verification system that is simultaneously reliable, privacy-compliant, and operational at scale. The European digital identity wallets mandated by EU regulations will not be functional before the end of 2026, and the precise conditions for their deployment in age verification are still being drafted by the Commission alongside national Digital Services Coordinators. This means that enforcement systems will not be ready before early 2027—well after the September 2026 deadline established by the French government.”
And the fourth point of weakness?
“The vagueness regarding the scope of the ban. The text fails to explicitly name the platforms subject to the rule. Furthermore, the status of ‘semi-public’ features within instant messaging services and social functionalities embedded in online video games remains uncertain; the government intends to fold them into the ban purely via explanatory statements, without any solid foundation in the statutory text itself. This lack of legal precision invites endless interpretive litigation and fragmented, inconsistent compliance by operators.”
