Netherlands 'fuelling' Europe's child abuse emergency Charles HymasOctober 6, 2025 at 7:00 AM 0 Criminal networks of paedophiles are exploiting the lax regime in the Netherlands to produce and distribute online child sexual abuse material Dominic Lipinski The Netherlands is fuelling Europe's child s...
- - Netherlands 'fuelling' Europe's child abuse emergency
Charles HymasOctober 6, 2025 at 7:00 AM
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Criminal networks of paedophiles are exploiting the lax regime in the Netherlands to produce and distribute online child sexual abuse material - Dominic Lipinski
The Netherlands is fuelling Europe's child sexual abuse "emergency" by hosting most of the illegal online content circulating on the continent, research has revealed.
The country is responsible for hosting more than 60 per cent of all online child sexual abuse material (CSAM) in western Europe, according to the report by the Childlight Global Safety Institute, based at Edinburgh University. Across the world, the country accounts for 30 per cent.
The country's failure to take down the illegal content means that it is undermining efforts by other countries including the UK, France and Germany to protect children by detecting, taking down the material and prosecuting those behind it, says the Institute.
It means that criminal networks of paedophiles are able to exploit the lax regime in the Netherlands to produce and distribute online child sexual abuse material, further fuelling demand for the content.
The problem echoes the Red Hot Dutch controversy in the 1990s where the UK Government fought a court battle to stop the Netherlands based pornographic satellite station of that name from broadcasting into the UK.
The Government eventually secured victory in the high court that it had the right to block programmes originating from other European Community countries.
Data produced by Childlight showed that Netherlands had the highest rate of child sexual abuse posts per head of population in Western Europe at 880.9 cases per 10,000 people for 2024, up from 172.1 the previous year.
It was followed by Slovakia on 193.7, Lithuania on 190 and Luxembourg on 186.3. The highest rate in South Asia was in the Maldives, at 94, followed by Bangladesh on 64.1 and Pakistan on 41.3. The UK has the 12th highest rate of 34 Western European countries at 41.8 (up from 27.2), and the lowest is San Marino on 5.4.
The children's charity, Terre des Hommes, calculated that there would need to be 1.5 million fewer posts in the Netherlands to bring it in line with the western European average.
'Worrying and unacceptable'
"What happens in the Netherlands is not staying in the Netherlands," said Childlight chief executive Paul Stanfield.
"Dutch data infrastructure is being used to spread images of child abuse worldwide – including abuse of children in other countries. Every day this material stays online, children are re-victimised, and abusers are emboldened. This is preventable and we need urgent political will to stop it."
"These numbers are worrying and unacceptable," said Gráinne Le Fevre, chief executive of Terre des Hommes Netherlands. "We urge Dutch politicians to act quickly. Better regulations are needed to stop this scale of abuse.
"The time to act is now. Every day CSAM stays online, children are re-victimised. The Netherlands has a unique responsibility, and opportunity, to close these gaps and stop this cycle of harm."
Childlight suspected several factors could explain the Dutch problem including the country's role as a global hub for data centres and internet exchange points, the scale and openness of its hosting market, and potential differences in hosting business models or takedown procedures.
Legal and regulatory frameworks may also shape both the speed of content removal and the visibility of CSAM in monitoring data, while strong detection partnerships could amplify reporting compared to countries with weaker monitoring capacity.
However, there are signs of change. In 2022, the Dutch government introduced reforms to strengthen criminal investigations into CSAM, and law enforcement agencies have begun increasing takedown capacity.
At the EU level, proposed regulation – including the EU Child Sexual Abuse Regulation – seeks to require tech companies to proactively detect, report, and remove CSAM.
If passed, this would compel the Netherlands and other member states to take a more interventionist approach to content monitoring, potentially closing long-standing loopholes in digital hosting laws.
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