The Age Verification app is one tile in a much larger mosaic, a European strategy to protect a generation growing up inside environments engineered to capture their attention and convert their behaviour into commercial value. The debate is not about age verification, it is about digital Europe.
EU digital sovereignty is autonomy via cooperation, not isolation. To avoid being a regulator without infrastructure, pursue managed interdependence with two pillars: developing tech industry and build DPI (EUDI Wallet and Digital Euro). Forge alliances (India, Brazil) to scale sovereign platforms.
While Europe defends money as a public good through the Digital Euro, the USA delegates its future to private, opaque, and profit-driven stablecoins. This is not merely a technical clash, but a battle between democratic control and market power.
Europe's response to technological dependence cannot be purely national nor aim to replicate big tech. What's needed is Digital Cooperation: global alliances, shared investments, and interoperable infrastructures to achieve strategic autonomy through governed interdependence.