Greek Prime Minister urges EU regulatory action against algorithmic exploitation of children
In conversation with 5Rights’ President Baroness Kidron at the global forum on AI in Athens, Prime Minister Mitsotakis denounced the tech sector’s “unprecedented global experiment with the mental health of our children”.
At the second edition of the Lyceum Project – a global AI forum held in Athens – Baroness Beeban Kidron, Honorary President of 5Rights Foundation, was invited by Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis to share the stage in a public dialogue on children in the age of AI. What emerged was not just a theoretical exchange, but a clear signal that regulation on system design is gaining ground and that 5Rights’ influence is being felt at the highest levels of government.
The Prime Minister did not hesitate to identify the source of harm: a commercial system that rewards addictive behaviour, erodes mental health and denies children the opportunity to be treated as children, not adults or consumers.
“The models and the algorithms are designed to promote addiction. In the same way, and I apologise for being slightly provocative here, that tobacco companies knew many decades ago that smoking was addictive.”
Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Greek Prime Minister
Describing the current reality as an “unprecedented global experiment with the mental health of our children and our teenagers”, he called on Europe to assert its regulatory power.
Baroness Kidron reinforced this assessment, arguing that the digital environment children inhabit today is not inevitable: it is engineered and can be re-engineered.
“This is a 100% engineered world…and many of the things that we need for children are actually about switching some things off. We have to design the world to be appropriate for children, like we design other environments.”
Baroness Beeban Kidron, 5Rights President
She warned that regulation must move upstream, focusing on how systems are designed and developed – particularly through effective default settings – rather than relying on reactive tools or parental controls.
This alignment between Baroness Kidron and Prime Minister Mitsotakis was not coincidental. Many of the principles embedded in Greece’s new National Strategy to Protect Minors Online – restrictions on addictive features, limits on excessive profile personalisation due to excessive targeting, implementation of child-friendly design by default – have been core demands of 5Rights for more than a decade.
At a moment when EU institutions face mounting pressure to deregulate, this exchange marked a reaffirmation of values: that childhood has intrinsic worth, that design is political, and that children’s rights must be embedded into the systems that shape their lives, including AI. Prime Minister Mitsotakis’ stated ambition for Greece to lead on this agenda at the European level, by shaping more thoughtful and enforceable regulation, offers a concrete opportunity to turn that vision into practice. 5Rights supports this leadership and urges that children’s rights are prioritised in the AI Act and in the implementation of the Digital Services Act.