BRUSSELS — You know that customer-service bot that won’t let you cancel your subscription? The EU wants to kill it.  

With a new law presented Wednesday, the European Commission will take aim at the endless array of practices websites have used over the past 20 years to make more money from consumers.  

The Digital Fairness Act is the European response to a wider regulatory trend that has seen consumer authorities curb irksome and exploitative practices. These include dynamic pricing that changes ticket prices based on demand, cumbersome processes for canceling subscriptions and the near-complete surrender of customer service to automated systems.  

According to a draft of the DFA obtained by POLITICO, the Commission will address several aspects of the design, service and terms under which businesses interact with consumers online. 

“Europe should not accept a digital economy where profits depend on exploiting people’s vulnerabilities,” Spanish socialist lawmaker Laura Ballarín Cereza, a key European lawmaker on tech legislation, said in a statement.

Industry leaders have pushed back on this potential new rulebook ever since the EU executive began considering a revision of consumer law in 2022. They say current consumer protection and digital services laws already cover these practices. “Where existing rules already cover a practice, it should not be regulated or enforced a second time,” said Ben Brake, director general of tech lobby DOT Europe.  

Consumer groups say existing rules, some dating back to 2005, are not clear enough and that many unfair design practices are still rampant.  

The Commission would have the power to impose fines of up to 6% of global annual revenue for companies that violate the new law. Those penalties are similar to fines levied under the Digital Services Act, the EU’s platform rules meant to stop Big Tech platforms from provoking systemic, society-wide harms through everything from election interference to keeping minors away from violent content. The new law instead would apply to any business offering services to EU consumers online. 

Dark patterns

The DFA would ban deceptive design known as “dark patterns,” which manipulate consumers through the use of such tactics as bright-colored buttons placed prominently to get customers to buy something. It also aims to ban personalized pricing that targets vulnerable consumers, including minors.  

The practice of dynamic pricing is also targeted in the law. That’s when a seller adjusts the price based on conditions such as demand or a user’s location, and it is commonly used in the sale of concert and airline tickets. The proposed law requires transparency when customers are buying products whose prices are subject to change.  

The DFA also covers consumer rights around “agentic commerce,” when artificial intelligence agents are used to find and complete purchases. 

Four lawmakers from the conservative, socialist and liberal groups said the requirement doesn’t go far enough and that the DFA should completely ban dynamic pricing for cultural and sporting events, according to a letter obtained by POLITICO. 

Sellers offering subscriptions will have to provide an easy way to cancel, reminiscent of New York State’s “click to cancel” rules. The new EU rules also require that a human is available for after-sales customer support.  

The rules also address, for the first time, specific aspects of online gaming, including bans on video games that allow kids to pay to succeed and progress in the game.  

The DFA is also trying to make its mark on what is known as “addictive design” of online platforms. This has already been the target of enforcement action in Europe and litigation in the U.S. in cases involving minors. But the new consumer rules would apply to adults as well, requiring online platforms to offer an opt-out from addictive features like autoplay.  

Spain’s Ballarín Cereza thinks this is not enough, saying users should be opted out of these features by default. “Why should consumers carry the burden when companies deliberately design these addictive mechanisms? We must shift from consumer responsibility to corporate responsibility: safety and fairness must be the default, not an option,” she said. 

PARIS — French Minister of Foreign Affairs Jean-Noël Barrot said Iran was behind the recent series of “unprecedented” cyberattacks on refrigerators in several major supermarket chains in the country last month.

“Thanks to the outstanding work of the government departments, I am able to confirm that responsibility for this attack lies with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards,” Barrot told reporters Monday at a G7 meeting in Paris. “We will impose sanctions at European level against those responsible.”

Barrot said that 700 food distribution sites in France were impacted in the cyberattack. French prosecutors said shortly after that they were opening an investigation into the hacks.

Though Barrot was only referring to the incidents reported in France, grocery stores across Europe and even French blood banks have been targeted by hackers in recent days. Cyber experts had previously raised concerns that the attacks may have been part of Russia’s ongoing hybrid warfare against Europe, though the Kremlin has denied any involvement.

In a statement, a spokesperson for France’s foreign affairs ministry said the French investigation found that Iran’s cyber unit, Shahid Kaveh, carried out the destructive attacks. Shahid Kaveh, which is linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, carries out offensive cyber operations.

The French investigation will focus on the unit’s head, the Paris prosecutor’s office said in a statement, adding that about 20 fires had been started because of the cyberattack.

“The attackers took remote control of the equipment via web interfaces to trigger abnormal defrost cycles of unlimited duration, while disabling the security alerts on the sensors that were supposed to activate once a certain temperature was exceeded,” it added.

“We just heard now that [the cyberattacks] were attributed to Iran,” European Council President Kaja Kallas said after Barrot’s statement, adding that the matter would be discussed at next week’s European foreign affairs council. If the attribution is confirmed, she said, “[Europe’s] response should be strong.”

The European Commission is also looking into these cyberattacks, which EU Agriculture and Food Commissioner Christophe Hansen described as a “deliberate attempt to disrupt our food supply chain.”

Iran’s foreign affairs ministry and its embassy in Paris did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

This story has been updated.

BRUSSELS — At least 15 European flights were targeted by bomb threats Thursday, following seven similar incidents earlier in the week in which authorities found no explosives.

Irish airline Aer Lingus reported that one of its flights from Dublin to Rome was diverted to an airport in France following a security threat.

The office of French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said that the plane landed safely in Évreux, northwest of Paris, and that the 157 people on board were taken to safety.

According to the BBC, two other flights were diverted Thursday following similar alerts: a Wizz Air plane from Milan to Warsaw, which was diverted to Vienna; and a Ryanair flight from London to Sofia, which was diverted to Plovdiv, Bulgaria.

Finnish carrier Finnair said that two of its aircraft — both departing from Helsinki and bound for Rome and Vienna — faced “faced unfounded or hoax bomb threats” and were subject to police checks after landing. The plane bound for Rome was also escorted by Italian fighter jets.

“Unfortunately, air traffic is sometimes subject to threats, as we have seen this week, when also other airlines in Europe have faced hoax bomb threats,” said spokesperson Päivyt Tallqvist.

Another bomb threat affected a flight operated by LOT from Warsaw to Brussels Airport on Thursday morning. Airport spokesperson Ihsane Chioua Lekhli told Belgian newspaper Het Nieuwsblad that police carried out searches and no further security measures were deemed necessary.

LOT said that another aircraft scheduled to fly from Warsaw to Paris “was stopped while taxiing and directed to a designated parking stand” before departure.

“The aircraft and all baggage underwent a security screening,” said the airline, which added that no hazardous items were found and that the flight departed with a replacement aircraft.

Italian news agency ANSA reported that two flights bound for Milan Malpensa Airport — an Aegean Airlines flight from Thessaloniki and a Ryanair flight from Porto — were also searched following bomb threats.

Two other Ryanair flights bound for Sofia — one from Copenhagen and the other from Madrid — were also reportedly targeted by bomb threats.

Czech police said on social media that four flights bound for Prague Airport were also threatened, but officers assessed “the severity of the threats as low.”

Ben Smith, CEO of Air France–KLM, said that the threats were happening “in a coordinated way.”

“I don’t think we’ve seen this before,” he said during a Thursday earnings call, but added that the airline group is not making any requests of governments. “We’re quite confident that we have in place what we need to ensure that it has minimal or no impact on our operations.”

EU Transport Commissioner Apostolos Tzitzikostas said: “It is too early to draw conclusions on whether the reported incidents are linked.”

He added that the EU-level information sharing mechanism for aviation security has been activated. “We don’t have information yet whether this is a cyber attack,” he said.

EU Aviation Safety Agency spokesperson Janet Northcote said: “The immediate safety threat from individual hoax threats is low. However, the higher number of diversions places an additional strain on the system.”

Seven passenger aircraft were searched on Monday and Tuesday by authorities in Spain, Poland, Italy and Bulgaria following bomb threats. No explosives were found, but the alerts also led to the temporary closure of Warsaw Chopin Airport.

The risk of someone successfully smuggling a bomb aboard an airplane is low, said Jan-Arwed Richter, CEO of JACDEC, an aviation-safety analysis firm.

“Today there is hardly any thinkable way to get explosives aboard a commercial flight,” he said. “The last real bombing of a flight took place on Oct. 31, 2015 on a flight from Egypt to Russia because of security loopholes and personnel shortcomings that were rectified immediately.”

This article has been updated.

BRUSSELS — Prince Harry and Meghan Markle will visit the European Parliament next week to discuss online child safety, according to an email sent to lawmakers and seen by POLITICO.

Visiting Brussels for the first time as a couple, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex will on Tuesday join Parliament President Roberta Metsola in opening an exhibition honoring “the memory of children whose lives were lost in connection with online harms.”

Prince Harry will then discuss with Commissioner Dubravka Šuica, experts and lawmakers “how we can turn legislative commitments into effective safeguards for children, including through safer design, stronger enforcement, and clear accountability for technology companies,” the email reads.

The event is being hosted by Spanish center-right lawmaker Antonio López-Istúriz White, who is the vice president of the Parliament’s intergroup on children’s rights. In September, the European Commission proposed the EU Kids Act, which includes restrictions on social media use for minors.

“The decisions we take on AI, platform design and the enforcement of online safeguards will shape the digital environments in which children grow up. This responsibility cuts across parliamentary committees and policy areas; the experiences of children and families should inform and guide our work throughout,” Lopéz wrote in his invitation to other lawmakers.

BRUSSELS — The Make America Healthy Again crusade against Big Food is crossing the Atlantic.

Donald Trump’s health secretary has made packaged, mass-produced munchies one of the targets of his health agenda. And while Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s broadsides against vaccines have alarmed Brussels he has found an ally in the European Commission on this pillar of the MAHA mission.

Health Commissioner Olivér Várhelyi — former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s man in Brussels — has backed Kennedy’s push, saying Europe and the U.S. share an ambition to tackle unhealthy diets. 

“I welcome the US – including Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – putting a stronger spotlight on this agenda including the #eatrealfood campaign,” Várhelyi wrote on LinkedIn after his appearance at the USA-EU Transatlantic Business Summit in Brussels earlier this year.

But sharing an ambition is the easy part. Deciding what ultra-processed food is — and whether or how it should be regulated: not so much.

At the heart of the debate is a growing body of research linking UPFs to conditions such as obesity and diabetes, risks everyone says they want to reduce. But the challenge is translating that evidence into public health policy without dictating what people eat. 

For industry, the priority is protecting personal choice. For public health advocates, the problem is systemic. What appears to be an individual choice is often the result of inequality, they argue — influenced by income, education and a food environment that can make healthier options harder to access.

The issue has been pitting health advocates against Big Food companies on multiple continents for years now — but global momentum is moving toward regulation as the World Health Organization prepares to unveil new tools to help policymakers this week. 

The “million dollar question,” as health activist Liz Arnanz put it, is how to define ultra-processed foods. 

The term might bring to mind salty chips, preservative-filled pastries and sugary drinks, but that category can also include whole-grain bread or fortified yogurt.

“We are seeing a huge increase of deaths linked to unhealthy diets,” said Arnanz, of the NCD Alliance, an NGO fighting against noncommunicable diseases. Not only are UPFs usually “high in fats and sugar and sodium,” she argued, but there is also “an independent unhealthiness layer of the processing of food.”

Her last point is a controversial one, directly disputed by industry and up for debate among scientists. Where health advocates see cheap junk food that’s chemically engineered to be addictive, the industry can point to innovations that make products more nutritious, less expensive and safer to eat, for longer.

Echoes of the tobacco debate

For all the increasingly tough talk around UPFs from both Kennedy and Várhelyi, concrete regulation remains scarce in both Washington and Brussels. 

Latin America has arguably been the trailblazer, with Brazil a leading example. It became one of the first countries to explicitly tell its population to avoid UPFs, and backed this up with rules to limit them in schools. On the international level, the WHO is developing its own global guidance, with plans to present a food profiling tool intended to help governments decide on UPF regulations on Monday at an event in Nuremberg, Germany.

The global health body has come down hard on the UPF industry. It accused it in a 2024 report of using the same playbook as alcohol and tobacco industries “to influence entire systems,” from “political lobbying and spreading misinformation and disinformation in the media, to harmful financial practices, and targeted marketing strategies directed at children and young people.”

Connecting the consumption of processed foods with the tobacco and fossil fuel industries is “irresponsible and outrageously misleading,” said Rafael Sampson, a senior manager for public affairs at the trade association FoodDrinkEurope. The WHO report, he added, “ignores” that the science around UPFs remains contested.

Carrots or taxes

European health advocates are convinced that Brussels should act, but they’re divided over which tools to use — and how far to take the tobacco comparison. 

Suzy Sumner, who heads the Brussels office of the Foodwatch advocacy group, takes a page from the playbook against cigarettes and alcohol, backing taxes on junk food, marketing restrictions to children and front-of-pack labels. 

Marleen Kestens, manager for cardiovascular disease prevention policies at the European Heart Network, backs more positive incentives, adding that food should not be treated like tobacco.

“We would be much more in favor of subsidizing those products that people should consume more of, rather than having taxes on products that people should eat less,” Kestens said.

The Commission, meanwhile, is waiting for the results of a study on the potential health risks of UPFs, set to land in March 2027. Until then, it is reluctant to “prejudge the outcomes,” the Commission said in a statement to POLITICO. 

Despite a “growing body of evidence,” the statement said, “certain impacts (such as environmental and social) are less well explored at present.”

One thing that’s off the table: The Commission “of course has no intention to decide what citizens should eat or not,” the statement stressed. 

In fact, the Commission did flirt with using taxes to discourage people from buying unhealthy UPFs, in a leaked draft of its plan to tackle cardiovascular disease. But that dropped out of the final version. 

Instead, Várhelyi told MEPs early this year, the idea is to “use financial incentives to push the industry to reformulate the products” while trying to inform consumers about UPF health risks. 

Those types of policies are more likely to get buy-in from manufacturers. After all, the sector has already been working on both tasks “for decades,” said Sara Lamonaca, FoodDrinkEurope’s director of consumer information, nutrition and health.

The Commission’s caution on moving forward sits awkwardly with Europe’s deep-rooted resistance to food industrialization. Both at national and EU level, regulators have hardly shied away from limiting what ends up on citizens’ plates, from restrictions on genetically modified vegetables to a ban on selling plant-based meat substitutes under names like “veggie bacon.” 

“Regulating ultra-processed food and the food environments more broadly is something where the European region is lagging behind,” NCD Alliance’s Arnanz said.

America first

Even Washington has gone further than Brussels in turning words into action. The U.S. is currently moving toward a first definition of ultra-processed food. Back in January, Kennedy announced new dietary guidelines, warning Americans against highly processed foods and calling for a reduction in sugar intake.

“It’s beyond Europe now,” said Foodwatch’s Sumner. “It’s out of the box in a way now, and I think it’s going to be very difficult to try to pull back and say, ‘Oh, actually, no, there is no problem with these products at all.’”

The industry is adamant that the focus shouldn’t be on the P-word: “There is not enough evidence to use the level of processing as a basis for issuing dietary recommendations or public health policy,” Lamonaca said.

As the U.S. midterms and Brussels’ UPF study deadline draw closer, expect the lobbying to intensify on both sides of the Atlantic.

“The fight will be huge as usual,” said Kestens.

For decades, Spain’s high-speed rail network had been a source of national pride, symbolizing the country’s rapid modernization and its rise among Europe’s leading economies.

But Wednesday’s deadly train disaster — following another mass-casualty rail crash in January — is turning that legacy into a political liability and putting the state of the railways at the center of the campaign ahead of the Nov. 29 snap election.

“The deaths of more than 100 people in two train accidents in the span of eight months raise serious questions about the integrity of the railway system,” opposition leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo said Thursday, adding that Spaniards “deserve answers.”

Those answers are hard to find. Experts point to human error, maintenance issues, austerity and EU-level rail safety reform as all having played their part in the deaths of at least 69 people near Toledo on Wednesday.

Spain’s transport ministry says the preliminary investigation points to a chain of failures. After a computer malfunction knocked out the German-made signaling system installed in 1992, railway network officials took control and authorized a train to proceed along a track where another had stopped, causing the deadly collision.

Jaime Tamarit, a former director of a European railway-signaling certification laboratory who helped oversee the development of the pan-European system meant to prevent railway accidents, said the system failure revealed the grave state of Spain’s high-speed rail network.

“The whole point of a train-protection system is to guard against human error,” he said, adding that the failure of such a critical mechanism suggested, “the infrastructure is in a terrible state.” 

Investment in Spain’s railways plunged during the financial crisis and subsequent austerity years. Although spending has since recovered, it remains well below its pre-crisis level in real terms.

Between 2018 and 2022, Spain allocated an average of €1.5 billion a year to high-speed rail —more than France or Germany — but most of that money went toward new infrastructure. Maintenance, renewals and upgrades accounted for about 16% of Spain’s high-speed rail spending, compared with 34% to 39% in France, Germany and Italy, according to European Commission data.

“If you have more train lines, you need more staff, and to spend more on maintenance,” Tamarit said.

The safety expert attributed the apparent lack of investment to political prioritization that values flashy new construction over maintaining existing infrastructure. “Maintenance is vital — but also politically invisible,” he lamented.

Adif, Spain’s railway infrastructure manager, has repeatedly defended the adequacy of its maintenance regime and insists it has always complied with safety requirements. The state-owned company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Unanswered questions

Ana Miranda, a European Parliament lawmaker from Galicia’s nationalist BNG party, accused Spanish authorities of failing to learn from past rail disasters, drawing parallels between Wednesday’s crash near Toledo and the 2013 Angrois disaster in Galicia, which killed 80 people and injured 152.

“The Angrois accident is happening again,” she said, arguing that the government of then-Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy had focused on human error while failing to adequately address the technical and systemic issues that may have contributed to the disaster.

“In the Angrois case they singled out the driver, and now they’re trying to do the same with the control workers,” Miranda said. “We need to get to the root of the causes, and that requires investigations.”

The EU Agency for Railways reached a similar conclusion in 2016, when it issued a report finding the investigation into the Angrois disaster had not met the required standards of independence and recommended a new inquiry. The European Commission subsequently launched infringement proceedings over wider shortcomings in Spain’s railway safety oversight.

Miranda said authorities had also failed to conduct a sufficiently rigorous inquiry into January’s Adamuz crash, which killed 46 people. An independent technical investigator assisting the probe has alleged that Adif altered accident reports, while questions have also emerged over documentation relating to inspections of track welds on the stretch where the crash occurred.

Adif denies wrongdoing and says it has cooperated with the judicial investigation.

For Miranda, the repeated controversies point to a failure spanning successive governments. She accused the country’s two dominant parties — the center-right People’s Party, which was in power at the time of the Angrois crash, and Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s center-left Socialists, who have governed Spain since 2018 — of maintaining a “pact of silence on high-speed rail.”

“They had enough time to implement rules,” she said. “How easy is it to blame the worker when nothing has been done to change things?”

Europe’s slow transition to safer railways

Wednesday’s crash highlights a wider European challenge: replacing fragmented national signaling systems with modern technology while maintaining aging infrastructure. 

The trains involved in the deadly collision in Toledo were not using ERTMS, the European Union’s standard rail-signaling system, which can automatically brake trains that exceed permitted speeds or fail to obey signals.

Spain’s post-pandemic recovery plan included investments to modernize railway signaling and traffic control, including the deployment of ERTMS. The Madrid–Seville line was also due to be equipped with the system under a separate signaling-renewal project authorized in 2020, but the upgrade remains incomplete.

Investigators have yet to determine whether ERTMS would have made a difference in Wednesday’s crash.

Deployment of the latest railway safety technology across Europe remains far behind schedule. By the end of 2024, European Train Control System technology — the core signaling component of ERTMS — was operational on only about 12,400 kilometers of track, roughly 10% of the EU’s trans-European transport network, according to the European Union Agency for Railways.

National plans aim to expand coverage to 40,000 kilometers by 2030, out of roughly 63,000 kilometers the EU wants equipped across the bloc. But an EU official said they doubted even that target would be met on time.

Politics has been part of the problem, the official said, with countries having “different reasons for not adopting the system” and Brussels allowing national systems to remain in place for years. “It was only in 2024 when we actually said ERTMS is going to be the single European system,” the official added.

The EU aims to have ERTMS installed on 57% of its main rail corridors by 2030 — but that target increasingly seems out of reach. 

Rail lobbies in Brussels say funding for signaling and network upgrades is insufficient. But these concerns have only sharpened after the Irish presidency of the Council of the EU proposed cutting the Connecting Europe Facility by 14% from the Commission’s original proposal in its latest negotiating document for the bloc’s next seven-year budget.

Further safety improvements could be undermined by cuts to EU research programs. Indeed, a draft of the new Horizon Europe structure under the next long-term budget, seen by POLITICO, could cut rail research entirely — even though that research is what underpins the ERTMS blueprints the industry will have to adopt.

The official added that companies won’t expand production without knowing that “there are contracts for next year.”

Despite the obstacles, the European Commission is trying to accelerate the rollout of the safety mechanisms.

Last September, industry and policymakers gathered in Brussels to discuss an “ERTMS Deal” aimed at standardizing technical requirements, speeding up approvals and encouraging deployment through EU funding. 

But the technical blueprint underpinning the plan is still being developed, with an initial batch of results expected by the end of 2027 and some elements requiring further testing and validation. 

That leaves little time before the EU’s 2030 deployment targets. For an industry seeking to expand production, the official said, the uncertainty itself is an obstacle for companies that ultimately need to know “there are contracts for next year.”

Delays in improving rail safety remain a challenge across Europe. The deadly crash on the line between Madrid and Seville is a stark reminder that the stakes of getting those improvements right are measured in human lives.

MONTREAL — Prime Minister Mark Carney is positioning Ottawa’s C$1.6 billion investment in Canadian artificial intelligence company Cohere as a downpayment on his country’s national security. 

“We’re not waiting for the future of AI to be decided somewhere else by those we don’t know or … don’t trust,” Carney said Thursday in Montreal ahead of the start of the Canada-EU summit.

Carney framed the upcoming congress, which includes meetings Friday with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa, as a shared endeavor to build a stronger transatlantic alliance in the face of global disruption.

“Sovereignty now requires secure access to semiconductors, critical minerals, payment systems, clean energy technology, vaccines, space-based communications and artificial intelligence,” Carney said. “Canada is taking a major step forward in artificial intelligence.”

In a pre-summit speech earlier Thursday in Montreal, von der Leyen cited April’s multi-billion dollar merger between Cohere and German counterpart Aleph Alpha as a key piece of the deepening Canada-EU cooperation that is set to unfold at Friday’s talks on AI.

“Both Canada and Europe believe this technology should serve people. So we will work together to tackle head-on the safety and security issues of runaway AI. We will develop together rules and standards and strong global governance,” she said.

Carney said Canada was making a commercial investment alongside private investors including Nvidia, Bell and Germany’s Schwarz Group.

Cohere co-founder and CEO Aidan Gomez announced the initial close of its Series E funding round on Thursday, which is targeting up to C$7 billion at a C$35.7 billion valuation.

Gomez joined Carney at Mila, the Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute, for the Canadian portion of the funding announcement. 

“We believe that artificial intelligence would become one of the defining technologies of this century, and that Canadians should help build it, shape it and benefit from it,” Gomez said, standing next to the Canadian leader. 

The Canada-EU summit is unfolding against the backdrop of economic threats by U.S. President Donald Trump against both transatlantic partners.

Carney dismissed suggestions Thursday that the summit could draw reprisals by Trump against the participants. “This is a process which we’re doing absolutely in the interest of the Canadians, but ultimately the U.S. will see that,” he said.

LONDON — Enforcement of the U.K.’s upcoming social media ban for under-16s will probably require older teens to show a form of photo ID, according to the U.K.’s online safety regulator Ofcom.

In a government-commissioned report, Ofcom said it had identified just four methods that are “highly effective” at determining whether a user is 16 or over — while noting that “the risk of circumvention cannot be entirely eliminated, and some children will succeed in bypassing age checks.”

The advice comes after the U.K. government vowed to take a tougher approach than Australia to enforcing its ban — due to come into force next year — by requiring platforms to use “highly effective age assurance” to identify underage users.

It will inform regulations to implement the ban which ministers have said they aim to introduce to parliament this year.

Three of the methods identified by Ofcom — photo ID matching, using a digital ID service, or banking-based checks — require a passport or driving license at some stage, while the fourth, facial age estimation, may in some cases need to be followed by a supplementary check using one of the other methods because of a high margin of error at younger ages.

“This ban will shape the future of children’s lives online, so it’s important to get it right,” Ofcom CEO Melanie Dawes said.

While the age checks would involve processing of personal data, “available methods can be delivered in a way that protects users’ privacy and complies with data protection law,” Ofcom said.

It also said social media platforms should take steps to mitigate circumvention, like enabling users to report suspected underage accounts, and using age inference technology to spot activity from users who may be underage.

The regulator said it will consult on further guidance for platforms once regulations to implement the social media ban are laid.

As Europe’s energy ministers meet in Brussels this week, they are weighing legitimate concerns around energy security, affordability, and the pressures facing businesses and households.

The European Commission’s proposal to delay selected EU Methane Regulation requirements for fossil-fuel importers is now moving quickly through the legislative process. Ministers have an opportunity to keep any adjustment tightly focused, while preserving the policy stability that companies and investors need to plan, invest and manage risk over the long term.

Investors need a stable framework against which companies can plan, manage risk and allocate capital with confidence.

For investors, the question is not whether implementation should be practical. It should. The question is whether a response to current pressures becomes a wider change to a framework that companies have already begun to implement.

Sixty investors, representing over €9.5 trillion in assets under management, have called for the EU Methane Regulation to be maintained and implemented as adopted. That statement pre-dated the Commission’s proposed one-year delay. Its central concern, however, is more relevant now: investors need a stable framework against which companies can plan, manage risk and allocate capital with confidence.

The regulation was designed with phased implementation. It gave companies, importers and national authorities time to prepare for stronger measurement, reporting and verification of methane emissions. It has helped bring methane from the margins into boardroom discussions, where it belongs.

Why methane matters to investors

For investors, methane performance can offer a useful view of how a company is run. It is an indicator of operational discipline, process safety and the quality of management oversight. By setting requirements for measurement, reporting and verification, the regulation can also improve the availability, consistency and reliability of methane data. That gives investors a stronger basis to compare companies and assess whether they are managing risks that could affect long-term value. Maintaining the regulation’s core provisions and avoiding any further delay would protect the progress already under way.

The EU’s position as a major oil and gas importer gives the Methane Regulation particular weight. Clear import requirements can improve the quality and comparability of emissions information across global supply chains. They can help create a more level playing field for companies supplying the European market, rather than allowing weak data or weaker controls to become a commercial advantage.

The choice is not between competitiveness, affordability and effective methane management. Europe can support all three.

This matters for competitiveness as well as climate-related financial risk. Energy affordability is a legitimate concern, particularly for businesses and households facing continued market volatility. But well-designed, practical rules can reward operational excellence, support informed investment decisions and give companies a clearer basis on which to plan, while implementation can be managed in ways that preserve market flexibility and limit unnecessary costs for consumers.

The choice is not between competitiveness, affordability and effective methane management. Europe can support all three. A three-year postponement, however, would not serve institutional investors, companies or Europe’s competitiveness.

Methane is often treated as a narrow technical issue. It is not. Reducing emissions from oil and gas operations is one of the quickest and most cost-effective ways to limit near-term warming. For companies, stronger measurement and reporting can also identify avoidable losses, improve operational performance and strengthen confidence among lenders and investors.

Companies and investors have already begun to respond to the direction set by the impending regulation. Investors are looking more closely at the quality of companies’ emissions data and the systems behind it. A predictable regulatory framework supports that work. Repeated changes to the timetable would do the opposite: they would make it harder to judge preparedness, compare performance and distinguish between companies that are acting now and those that are waiting for the rules to move again.

A longer delay would not remove the work needed to implement the regulation. It would postpone it, weaken incentives for companies and suppliers to prepare, and leave investors with less visibility over how methane-related risk will be managed. It could also disadvantage businesses that have already invested in stronger measurement and reporting, while slowing the development of the market for independent verification services needed to support credible implementation. When the requirements eventually return, the adjustment may be sharper and more costly. That uncertainty carries a cost for companies, investors and the wider market.

Practical implementation, not prolonged delay

The practical challenges facing importers are real and should be addressed through consistent implementation. This includes clear guidance from national authorities, practical ways to link relevant methane data to imported fuels, and clear standards for countries outside the EU whose methane rules are recognized as comparable to EU requirements. This approach would preserve market flexibility and help limit unnecessary costs, without weakening the regulation’s purpose.

If a one-year adjustment is judged necessary, ministers should keep it tightly defined, with a clear end date and no reopening of the regulation’s core provisions. They should use the period to provide the guidance that companies, importers and national authorities need to implement the rules consistently.

The choice facing ministers is not whether Europe should address methane emissions, but whether it does so through a stable framework that rewards preparedness and investment. A limited adjustment may be manageable. A prolonged delay risks creating uncertainty, slowing preparation and leaving Europe less competitive.

Stephanie Pfeifer, CEO, Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of all IIGCC members.

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Two high-speed trains collided south of Madrid on Wednesday morning, less than a year after the Adamuz train crash that killed dozens of people and shook Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s government.

At least 64 people died and 58 people were injured in the crash, which took place near Urda in Toledo province just before 9 a.m. local time, emergency services in Castilla-La Mancha said on Wednesday afternoon. The toll has now exceeded that of the Adamuz crash, where 46 people died on Jan. 18.

Emergency services said a Renfe train rear-ended a stationary Iryo train, causing two Iryo carriages to fall down an embankment. Both trains were traveling between Madrid and Seville.

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said he was “dismayed” by the accident and sent his “solidarity and support” to the victims and their families. He said emergency services were working at the scene to help those affected and ensure their safety.

Opposition leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo of the People’s Party said he was “very worried” about reports of a new rail accident and that the priority now was to help the victims and support their families.

Santiago Abascal, leader of far-right Vox, also offered condolences to the victims’ families but turned his message to the government. “I will not rest until this government, which is a criminal organization, sits in the dock to answer for its crimes,” he said on social media.

The accident led the government, the PP, the PSOE and the left-wing Frente Amplio to cancel their main pre-campaign events ahead of the November 29 general election, with Vox as the exception. Abascal said he would not “use mourning to silence the complaints” in an interview Wednesday morning.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen offered her condolences on X, saying she had received the “devastating news” from Toledo and that “Europe mourns with you.”

The Adamuz accident drew sharp criticism of Sánchez’s government, with the PP accusing it of failing on rail safety and demanding that Transport Minister Óscar Puente answer for it. Sánchez, who stood by Puente, was later grilled in the Spanish parliament over the government’s response.

This is a developing story.