The Commission may publish guidelines to help online platforms and search engines meet specific obligations under the Digital Services Act.
Under the Digital Services Act (DSA), the Commission may publish guidelines to support online platforms and search engines in meeting their obligations in specific areas and articles of the DSA. Guidelines issued by the Commission are non-binding documents that provide recommendations on how to follow EU law.
Whilst implementing the measures recommended in these guidelines is voluntary and does not automatically guarantee compliance; they can serve as a reference point when assessing whether online platforms and search engines are meeting their legal obligations under the DSA. Furthermore, they may inform national regulators in their enforcement actions to ensure a consistent application of these provisions across the EU.
Guidelines on the protection of minors
The Commission presented its guidelines on the protection of minors under the DSA on 14 July 2025 (available in all EU languages).
These guidelines aim to ensure that children and teenagers can enjoy high levels of privacy, safety and security on online platforms.
Key recommendations include ways to protect children and teenagers from:
- Addictive design
- Cyberbullying
- Harmful content
- Unwanted contact from strangers
Guidelines on electoral processes
In April 2024, the Commission published guidelines for very large online platforms (VLOPs) and very large online search engines (VLOSEs) on the mitigation of systemic risks for electoral processes.
These guidelines aim to help VLOPs and VLOSEs reduce risks around election integrity online.
They provide a number of recommendations including:
- Reinforcing their internal processes to improve mitigation measures
- Implementing election-specific measures tailored to each individual electoral period
- Adopting specific mitigation measures related to generative AI
- Cooperating with EU and national authorities, experts, and civil society organisations
- Adopting incident response mechanisms during an electoral period
- Carrying out post-election reviews to assess the effectiveness of measures
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