10 March 2026 14:00 UTC · European Commission · EU Commission Press Release · Source · Email X Link

European Commission says EU will protect women online

Key points

Protect women from online violence
Increase girls' participation in STEM

TL;DR

Commissioner Lahbib says the EU will protect women and girls, speed up progress on gender equality, and resist political pushback at the UN Commission on the Status of Women in New York.
Commissioner Lahbib states the EU Directive on combating violence against women addresses cyberviolence and calls for action ahead of the 2027 transposition deadline.
Commissioner Lahbib reports the EU will enforce the Digital Services Act, investigate X's Grok AI use for deepfakes, engage platforms to remove illegal gender-based content, and promote Girls Go STEM to bring one million girls into STEM by 2028.

Original text

European Commission - Speech [Check Against Delivery] Speech by Commissioner Lahbib on Empowering Girls in the Digital Age New York, 10 March 2026 I want to start with a clear message that will underpin all my engagements this week at the UN Commission on the Status of Women in New York. While others go in the opposite direction, the European Union will continue to work for a safer and more equal future for women and girls. We will protect hard-won rights, speed up progress, and meet today's pushback with courage and clarity. We will not turn back. That is why your presence in New York is so important. It sends a clear message: when it comes to equality, Europe shows up. Last week, we presented our EU Gender Equality Strategy for the next five years. It builds on our Roadmap for Women's Rights adopted last March. If the Roadmap is our compass, this Strategy is our engine, turning principles into concrete action in women's lives. All Member States, along with EU institutions and international partners endorsed the Roadmap. This was a major milestone, but milestones are not destinations. Now the real work begins, and I am counting on you. Together, we must keep the European Union a steady light for gender equality, especially when the political winds are blowing hard against our values. Today one in three women in Europe experiences gender-based violence, including online. At least one in ten has experienced cyberviolence since the age of 15. And nearly one in three women in politics report abuse, including online attacks. Some of you in this room know exactly what that feels like. The digital world was supposed to open doors. Too often, it has opened the floodgates of abuse. The internet should be a place to speak, learn, and connect. Not a battlefield, not a hunting ground. That is why protecting women from online violence is a top EU priority. Our Directive on combating violence against women and domestic violence is the first EU law to address gender-based cyber violence directly. It states clearly: intimate image abuse, cyberstalking, and cyber harassment are serious crimes that must have consequences. We must break the culture of impunity. Online or offline, violence is violence. I urge all of you to move quickly. The 2027 transposition deadline may seem far way, but the work needs to start now. This is a cross-cutting priority in our new Strategy: we must stay the course to implement the landmark legislation we adopted over the past years. This includes the Pay Transparency Directive, a game changer for tackling pay discrimination. Now we must put it into action. Our Digital Services Act is now in full force. It puts real obligations on online platforms to tackle illegal content. We are committed to enforcing it. When we saw that X's Grok AI tool was being used to produce sexually explicit deepfakes of women and children, we acted. We launched an investigation and made one thing clear: in Europe, tech companies are not above the law. Our new Strategy goes further. We will engage directly with major platforms to make sure illegal gender-based violence content is flagged and removed. Freedom of expression must never mean freedom to abuse. But protection is only half the story. We are making the digital world safer and helping girls shape it. We need more women coding and designing new technology because if women are absent from the design table, inequality gets coded into the system. The 2025 Union of Skills Package and its STEM Education Strategic Plan are powerful tools to change that. Through the Girls Go STEM initiative, we aim to bring one million girls into STEM studies and careers by 2028. This 70 th session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women comes in a difficult political climate. That is exactly why your presence here matters. When the backlash gets louder, our unity must get stronger. When rights are questioned, our voice must be clearer. The world is watching Europe. It was the case last year, and it is even more true this year. I hear it again and again across continents: “Thank you for standing strong. Thank you for being a lighthouse for women's rights.” The road ahead will not be easy. But millions of women and girls are counting on us, and we will not let them down. SPEECH/26/588

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