EU Policy & Public Affairs
The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) is Europe’s largest hotline dedicated to finding, removing, and preventing access to child sexual abuse material (CSAM) online. We are one of only a few hotlines in the world with the legal authority to proactively search for illegal content, enabling us to act swiftly to protect children.
Working in close partnership with the internet industry, law enforcement agencies, and governments across the world, we help stop the repeated victimisation of people abused in childhood.
We remain deeply concerned by the scale of CSAM hosted in the European Union. In 2024, 62% of the content the IWF actioned for removal was hosted in an EU Member State — an 11% increase from 140,911 webpages in 2023 to 181,112 webpages in 2024.
These figures should serve as a clarion call to act: the EU cannot be a safe haven for child sexual abuse material. Our aim is to ensure a harmonised framework for the detection, reporting, and removal of CSAM in the EU.
How we engage in Brussels
Our Policy and Public Affairs team works with EU institutions, Member States, and civil society to shape policies that protect children and work towards an internet free from CSAM. We:
- Participate in expert consultations and stakeholder dialogues.
- Provide evidence and technical expertise to Members of the European Parliament, the Council of the EU, and European Commission officials.
- Collaborate with NGOs, law enforcement, and technology companies to promote solutions that are both effective and ethical, prioritising the safety of children and all users.
- Serve on the Steering Group of the European Child Sexual Abuse Legislation Advocacy Group (ECLAG) — a coalition of over 70 child rights organisations working internationally to prevent sexual abuse and violence against children, online and offline.
Our policy priorities
We advocate for robust EU legislation to detect, report, and remove CSAM, and to hold platforms accountable for harmful content. Our priorities include:
- Supporting the passage of the Child Sexual Abuse Regulation (CSAR) to ensure a strong legal framework for companies to detect, report, and remove CSAM.
- Modernising the Child Sexual Abuse Directive through the 2024 Recast to reflect the realities of online abuse and empower law enforcement and civil society across all Member States.
- Strengthening the Digital Services Act (DSA) to improve accountability for content harmful to children and other users.
- Embedding child protection in the Artificial Intelligence Act, especially in regulating technologies capable of generating harmful or illegal imagery.
Work With Us
The IWF brings unmatched expertise and data to help shape EU policy that protects children online.
- To learn more about our EU policy work, contact our Policy and Public Affairs team at [email protected].
- To work together on press engagement in the EU, contact our press team at [email protected].
Here you can view a breakdown by EU country showing where servers hosting illegal webpages were physically located at the time of IWF action in 2024. Figures exclude some direct reports from child reporting services. Global total: 290,638 webpages.