Greek Parliament Moves Bill Banning Under-15s From Four Social Platforms and Requiring Age Tokens for Adults

Greece is a step from making government-issued digital credentials a condition of using mainstream social media.

Two parliamentary committees approved the bill on Monday, Oct. 19, with the votes of the ruling New Democracy party. That party holds 158 of the 300 seats in the Hellenic Parliament. Opposition parties reserved their positions. The full chamber votes later this week, and a plenary majority is expected, according to Tech Times.

If it passes, the rules take effect January 1, 2027.

What the bill requires

The bill covers four platforms: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn. Children under 15 would be barred from all four. Parental consent cannot override the exclusion. That is a state rule displacing a parent's decision, and it is written into the bill.

Every adult who wants to keep using those platforms must authenticate through KidsWallet, a government mobile app deployed since late 2025. The app issues a cryptographic attestation, described by Tech Times as effectively a zero-knowledge proof, confirming only that the holder is over 15.

The platform gets a binary signal: over 15 or under 15. No name, identity document or date of birth is passed along.

Adults must re-verify every six months.

The bill does not reach YouTube, WhatsApp, messaging apps or the wider internet.

The identity plumbing behind it

KidsWallet sits on Gov.gr Wallet, Greece's national digital identity platform, which is built to comply with the EU's eIDAS 2.0 framework. The system is already used for tax filings, healthcare and other government services. Tech Times estimates a majority of Greek adults have registered.

Those users only need to authorize KidsWallet to issue a platform token. New registrants must complete a one-time identity check with the Greek state rather than with a social media company.

Under the scheme, the company never sees the ID. The state does.

The French ruling it is built around

The bill's architecture answers a court decision. In August, France's Constitutional Council struck down that country's under-15 ban. Tech Times reports the council ruled that requiring every adult to identify themselves to access a legal service violated their freedom of expression.

That is the objection Greece has to clear. The Greek approach is meant to meet it by ensuring platforms learn nothing beyond an age bracket. French judges held that the identification requirement itself was the problem. Whether a cryptographic token that hides identity from the platform changes that analysis is a question no court has yet answered.

Supporters of the Greek model are betting it does. Greece's opposition parties have not yet said where they stand.

What a vote will not settle

Passage in parliament does not end the legal question. Greece would be the first EU member state to run a cryptographic age-verification system at this scale on top of a national digital identity, per Tech Times. That makes it a test case, in Athens and potentially before EU bodies.

The practical questions are concrete. The six-month re-verification cycle means every adult user returns to the state's system twice a year or loses access. Adults without a Gov.gr Wallet identity must register with the state first. Parents who want a 14-year-old on one of the four platforms have no legal route to do so.

The plenary vote comes first. If the bill passes as expected, the next marker is January 1, 2027, when the four platforms must begin checking tokens in Greece.