From children’s colouring books to official portals: EU under fire for social media links

Corporate watchdog Ekō has today filed a formal complaint with the European Ombudsman, challenging the European Commission and other EU institutions over their systematic promotion of US-based social media platforms on official europa.eu websites, including Elon Musk’s “X”.  

The complaint argues that prominent “Follow us” and “Share this page” buttons — accompanied by the logos and direct links of platforms such as X (formerly Twitter), Meta services, and YouTube — amount to active endorsement of third-country commercial platforms whose data-processing practices have repeatedly been found incompatible with EU fundamental rights standards.   

Logos of the problematic social media companies even appear on EU publications made expressly for children, including an “I colour in Europe” colouring book available on the europa.eu website.  

The complaint highlights that EU institutions already operate a rights-respecting, EU-controlled alternative via Mastodon — which can be accessed anonymously and without exposure to unlawful international data transfers and AI manipulation.

Despite this, US-based platforms receive far greater visibility and prominence on EU webpages.  

According to Ekō, this practice undermines the EU’s own obligations under the Charter of Fundamental Rights, particularly the rights to privacy and data protection, as well as the principles of good administration and institutional neutrality.  

“EU citizens should not be nudged into using invasive third-country platforms which are riddled with scams and illegal content, just to follow or share public information from their own government institutions” said senior campaign manager Eoin Dubsky, who submitted the complaint on behalf of Ekō.

“And corporations which repeatedly violate law shouldn’t be rewarded with free advertising on EU publications.”   

Ekō also raises specific concerns about children’s rights, noting that social media logos and links appear even on EU publications aimed at children, including educational materials.

Conditioning access to public information on the use of platforms that pose documented risks to children’s privacy, safety, and wellbeing is, according to the complaint, incompatible with the EU’s obligations under Article 24 of the Charter.  

In addition, the organisation points to indirect economic and promotional effects, including search-engine optimisation advantages conferred by outbound links from the highly authoritative europa.eu domain — links that are not marked with the keyword “nofollow” to prevent search ranking benefits.

Ekō has asked the European Ombudsman to investigate whether these practices constitute maladministration and to recommend that EU institutions remove third-country social media links and logos from official EU webpages and ensure that all public communications published on external platforms are also made available on EU-controlled, rights-respecting channels.

“It is deeply inconsistent for EU institutions to harshly criticise certain social media corporations on the one hand, while simultaneously promoting their platforms through their logos and links on official EU websites,” Eoin Dubsky added.

“Governments shouldn’t encourage citizens to use harmful apps.”