Children and young people benefit enormously from the Internet and are one of the fastest growing groups of internet users. However, there are many issues which need to be addressed to ensure that children are protected online, including in relation to online business practice.

eNACSO, The European NGO Alliance for Child Safety Online – is a European Children’s Rights NGO network with 28 members from across Europe working to protect children online (www.enacso.eu). In our work, we see how online business practices often fail to respect children's rights. We see that children’s privacy is not accorded special protection when it is gathered for commercial purposes. And, we see that many of the rules and practices which have been established to protect children and young people from unfair commercial practices, e.g. deceptive and aggressive advertising, or barring access to legally proscribed areas or age sensitive materials, are not yet fully translated into the virtual space.

The EU plays an important role in ensuring protection of private data as well as modernising and simplifying online and digital consumer protection. It is important that children and their specific rights are needs aren't forgotten and that the EU adopts a coherent approach across policies to protecting children in digital media. As a first step, we strongly encourage the EU to work towards an explicit recognition, and full protection, of children as online economic actors in EU policy and legislation.