Published: Thu 23 Apr 2026
More child sexual abuse webpages are hosted in the EU than anywhere else in the world, according to new data released today by the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF).
The stark finding comes only a few weeks after a “devastating blow for child protection” when EU policymakers failed to extend a temporary law that allowed tech companies to detect for images and videos of children being sexually abused online.
The IWF, Europe’s largest hotline dedicated to finding and removing child sexual abuse material from the internet, says the need for the EU to swiftly pass a permanent legislative framework for tackling child sexual abuse imagery is now “more desperate than ever”, particularly in the light of the IWF’s latest findings.
More than 196,000 URLs seen in 2025, 63% of the 310,437 global reports IWF analysts identified as containing criminal child sexual abuse content, were traced to hosting services in EU member states.
A small number of EU countries – Bulgaria, the Netherlands and Romania* – account for a disproportionate share of confirmed child sexual abuse material webpages in the EU, with 73% hosted between them.
Bulgaria, with 87,959 URLs, is the worst country in the EU – and the world – for the number of criminal webpages hosted, moving up 19 percentage points from second place in 2024.
The Netherlands, 33,788 URLs, experienced a decline (18 percentage points) in the amount of material identified, moving down from its long-held top spot to second worst for hosting child sexual abuse material in the EU.
Romania was found to host 21,188 webpages, the third highest number of child sexual abuse webpages in the EU. Notable increases also occurred in France (up 6 percentage points) and Germany (up 4 percentage points).
Globally, the top three worst countries are Bulgaria with 28% of the total child sexual abuse webpages, the United States with 16% (49,021 webpages), and Netherlands with 11%.
Kerry Smith, Internet Watch Foundation CEO, said: “Tackling the iniquitous spread of child sexual abuse images and videos is a global problem that requires a strong, global response from the tech industry, governments and society.
“The EU continues to be the largest host of criminal URLs we action and the fact that tech companies now lack legal clarity for tackling child sexual abuse material in the EU is a devastating blow for child protection worldwide.
“Children, victims and survivors of sexual abuse in the EU are being failed by those who have been elected to represent them. The IWF is calling on EU lawmakers to work urgently towards passing a Child Sexual Abuse Regulation that ensures tech companies can detect for images and videos of child sexual abuse on their websites and platforms.
“A permanent legal framework to safeguard children from criminals online is now needed more desperately than ever.”
IWF analysts take steps to remove child sexual abuse material regardless of where it is hosted, by either issuing takedown notices directly to providers in the UK or liaising with hotlines and law enforcement in countries outside of the UK jurisdiction.
According to the IWF’s new Annual Data & Insights Report, it is likely that some countries consistently rank high for hosting child sexual abuse URLs because the scale and accessibility of their hosting infrastructure appeal to criminals.
Fluctuations in the numbers can reflect when illegal sites move between countries or are disrupted, the type of sites involved, the time taken to remove webpages and where IWF analysts proactively search for child sexual abuse content.
The recent rise in the number of criminal webpages hosted in Bulgaria is attributed to just a few problem websites. The drop in the Netherlands is likely because of effective monitoring and fast takedowns, rather than a decrease in hosting capacity.
The UK accounted for 951 URLs containing child sexual abuse material last year, 0.3% of the global total. More than 88% of the criminal webpages identified as being hosted in the UK were removed within 24 hours of being reported to the IWF. The fastest removal of a webpage was one minute.
Internet service providers can block access to child sexual abuse material through filtering tools, such as the IWF’s URL List, a catalogue of live webpages containing confirmed criminal imagery.
The IWF works to have the imagery removed from the internet while access to the content is blocked. Once the webpage is removed the list is then updated. In 2025 the IWF URL List contained an average of 6,923 URLs on any given day.
Read our Annual Data & Insights Report UK press release here.
Act now or see ‘fewer children safeguarded, fewer perpetrators held accountable, and offenders re-established on mainstream platforms’, lawmakers warned.
