The ways to strengthen cooperation between the government and Google, aimed at further improving mechanisms for protecting children and teenagers from harmful or inappropriate content, as well as the initiatives that Greece has undertaken, both at national and European level, for protecting minors online and addressing digital addiction, were examined during discussions between Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Google Vice President for Privacy and Security Evan Kotsovinos, Head of Government Relations and Public Policy for Greece, Cyprus and Malta Eugenia Bozou and other Google executives.
Mitsotakis with Google executives: KidsWallet development provides user age verification capability
Among other topics, the development of KidsWallet was highlighted, which represents the first government app that both allows parents to set limits on their children’s social media usage and provides user age verification capabilities.
It was emphasized that Greece has simultaneously led the European consultation on establishing a European digital age of consent and on mandatory integration of parental control tools in all internet-connected devices, proposals that have received widespread acceptance among EU member states.
In this context, Greece is one of five countries selected to pilot the European age verification system, which has already been integrated into KidsWallet and is scheduled for production deployment by the end of October.
The dialogue between Mitsotakis and Google’s Vice President
Kyriakos Mitsotakis: You know how much importance we attach to this purpose. Of course, we are currently also in discussions with the European Commission to see if we can develop more European solutions. This is an issue that concerns us greatly, as it does you. I’m very interested to learn more about what you have done – you know what we are doing – and also what your view is on how we can advance this discussion through our cooperation.
Evan Kotsovinos: Thank you for the invitation, Mr. Prime Minister. We are excited to be here to discuss our common goal of protecting children online. We want to thank you for your leadership and your interventions in this area. It is very important to us. We know that collectively, as a digital society, we need to do more, and indeed we are doing more, to protect children.
We will discuss how we empower parents and children in the digital world and how we protect them in our products. We will also share with you a study we conducted recently, which shows how much teenagers rely on online experiences and technology for their education and social development.
Before I close, I would like to say that we also want to talk about the issue of ensuring and verifying age. It is vital that we can protect children online. It is vital that we know their age, that we know whether a user is a child or not. We are working very closely on this issue. We are very excited about the cooperation. Thank you for hosting us and we look forward to the discussion we will have.
Dimitris Papastergiou: Yesterday was a very interesting day, because we were together with Evan and discussed age verification and how we can approach the whole issue. With Executive Vice-President of the Commission, Ms. Virkkunen, we showed how we can implement by the end of the month the new strategy for age verification, the new technical approach that the EU decided to follow. Now the decisions are before us. That’s why we are here, to discuss further.
