A legislative proposal currently before Romania’s parliament could fundamentally change how citizens access the internet, prompting warnings from legal experts that identity checks introduced in the name of child protection may lead to widespread monitoring of all users.
The draft law, informally dubbed the “online age-of-majority” bill, aims to strengthen safeguards for minors by requiring verifiable parental consent for online access and account creation by children under the age of 16. Critics, however, argue that the wording of the bill goes far beyond child protection and risks making identity verification a prerequisite for internet use in general.
One of the most vocal critics, lawyer Elena Radu of the Coalition for the Defence of the Rule of Law, said the proposal could open the door to generalized surveillance of online activity.
“The key word is accesses,” Radu said in a legal analysis of the bill, referring to a clause stating that minors under 16 “access online services and create personal accounts only on the basis of verifiable parental consent.” According to her, the absence of a clear distinction between minors and adults could require service providers to verify the identity of every user, each time an online service is accessed, in order to determine age.
Broad political backing
The bill was initiated by Senator Nicoleta Pauliuc and Deputy Bogdan Gruia Ivan and is backed by lawmakers from the Social Democratic Party (PSD), the National Liberal Party (PNL) and the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (UDMR).
It was approved by the Senate on 6 October 2025, with only five votes against, and is now under debate in the lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, which has final decision-making power.
From optional to mandatory digital identity
Another provision obliges online service providers to install “electronic mechanisms for verifying the user’s identity.” When read together with existing legislation on electronic identity documents, this would effectively make the electronic ID card the mandatory authentication tool for accessing both public and private online services, Radu said.
“Until now, electronic identification was an option,” she warned. “This law would turn it into a de facto condition for participating in digital life.”
‘For the children’ — or a step toward control?
Radu also cautioned that the law could facilitate a gradual but far-reaching transformation: the elimination of physical service counters, compulsory digitalisation of public services and conditioning access to rights and services on the possession of a digital identity.
She pointed to existing examples, such as mandatory use of the online tax portal for certain fiscal procedures and the rejection of administrative requests that do not meet digital prerequisites, as signs of a broader trend.
In her view, the bill represents not an isolated measure but a shift in paradigm. “With just two paragraphs in a law,” she said, “citizens could be brought into a system of generalized monitoring, legitimised by a narrative of child protection.”
Debate just beginning
As the draft law moves through the Chamber of Deputies, criticism such as Radu’s suggests that the so-called online age-of-majority bill is shaping up to be one of Romania’s most controversial legislative initiatives in recent years, with potentially profound implications for privacy rights and freedom of access to the internet.
