The EU's age-verification framework now has a shape and a schedule. Following April's Commission Recommendation, five member states, Denmark, France, Greece, Italy and Spain, are piloting the white-label age-verification solution; every member state is encouraged to file its implementation plan by 30 June; and by the end of 2026 at least one EU-compliant solution should be available in each country, with full EUDI Wallet interoperability to follow.
The design principles are the message
More important than the dates are the properties Brussels chose: prove the age attribute and nothing else, no central log of where a citizen proved it, open standards, wallet-compatible. This is the EU legislating the privacy-preserving version of age assurance as the norm, in deliberate contrast to identity-revealing age walls.
Platforms: converge once
For platforms operating across the UK and EU, the strategies now visibly converge: deploy age assurance that is simultaneously highly effective (Ofcom's bar) and data-minimal (Brussels' bar). WeVerify's dual-mode age verification, five-second biometric estimation with nothing retained, NFC chip age for certainty, was engineered on exactly those two axes, and slots into DSA and OSA obligations alike. One integration, both regimes, ready before the plans are even filed.