Regnier took aim at specific platforms in his remarks, stating that for example in Germany, “TikTok is used by half of children between 6 and 13 … That’s even below the legal threshold established by TikTok in their terms and conditions.”

Paolo Ganino, head of policy communications for TikTok in Europe, said in response that the site removes “around 6 million underage accounts globally each month” as part of a “broader trust and safety programme … designed to support the safety and well-being of teens and families.”

Amid vocal concerns from the U.S. government and tech companies about the implications of the EU’s content rules on civil liberties and free speech, Regnier said: “We will not, as a public institution, decide what social media our citizens can use. This is not our role. We take the problem the other way around. We want companies to follow our rules to make sure our citizens can use it in a safe way.”

Regnier stressed the Digital Services Act “is not the legal basis that will allow us to set the minimum age.”

European governments have increasingly been rallying behind strongly enforcing age limits on social media, whether pushing for national action or backing a bloc-wide crackdown.

This story has been updated with a response from TikTok.

“We are naked in a world of storms, because we have not prepared ourselves for today’s world,” the EPP leader said. “We were in a weak position during the trade deal … because half of Europe — the Balkans, Poland, Romania — are simply really afraid of Putin. And the only thing that can protect them at the moment is American military power.”

Europeans, Weber added, are now facing the hard reality of being “unable to defend ourselves against the drones that are coming.”

Moscow has been accused of violating NATO airspace on several occasions in recent weeks, including in Poland and Estonia, in what constitutes a new phase of escalating tensions between the West and Russia. Major Danish airports were briefly closed early Thursday morning due to what authorities said were drones.

On trade, Weber said he would have liked to see the EU and its chief negotiators show more self-confidence in talks with Trump over the summer, including by not backing down on the bloc’s digital tax for U.S. tech giants. But, he added, this was unrealistic due to the bloc’s military dependence on the U.S.

Weber called on the leaders of the EU’s 27 member countries to strengthen the bloc and show more visionary leadership.

“If we had a [Helmut] Kohl and a [François] Mitterrand today who created the euro back then, they would be paving the way for a European army,” he said. “That kind of leadership, that kind of visionary approach, is lacking at the moment.”

Today, he went on, this is the job of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron.

“It must be said that all of our top politicians are so caught up in national politics, so under pressure … that unfortunately, we do not have a generation of leaders in office right now who are capable of taking the big steps that are needed,” he added.

Publishing the name of a professional athlete online because they have broken anti-doping rules is against the EU’s privacy laws, a top EU lawyer has said.

The fresh opinion from Advocate General Dean Spielmann weighs a case taking place in Austria, where four professional athletes who have broken anti-doping rules are arguing that publication of their details online would breach the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation.

Austrian law requires details including the athletes’ names, sporting discipline, duration of their exclusion and the reasons for that exclusion to be published on the websites of the Austrian anti-doping agency and an associated legal committee.