The EU’s Action Plan Against Cyberbullying: What It Says, and What Your School Can Use Now

Most schools handling a cyberbullying incident are working from their own policy and whatever the platform’s reporting form allows. Far fewer know that the European Commission has an action plan devoted specifically to cyberbullying, or that a campaign built on it is running right now and closes on 25 September.

What the action plan sets out

The action plan is organised around three pillars: a coordinated EU approach to protection, prevention and awareness, and reporting and support. The Commission page setting it out was last updated on 17 March 2026.

Read as a school document, the third pillar is the one that stands out. Most anti-bullying policies are strong on prevention — an assembly, a poster campaign, a lesson in the pastoral slot — and thin on what happens in the hours after a child reports something. The action plan treats reporting and support as its own body of work rather than the tail end of prevention.

The measure that reaches students directly

One commitment is concrete enough to plan around. The Commission says it will support the implementation of an online safety app across all member states, enabling children and young people to easily report cyberbullying, store and submit evidence, and receive tailored assistance.

The evidence clause is the part worth noticing. Schools lose cases because screenshots were never taken, were taken badly, or the account was deleted before anyone recorded anything. An app that stores and submits evidence changes what a school can act on. There’s no rollout date on the page, so this is a commitment rather than a service you can use next term — but it tells you where this is heading.

#NotOnOurFeed runs until 25 September

Better Internet for Kids runs the #NotOnOurFeed campaign on behalf of the Commission. It opened on 24 August 2026 and closes on 25 September 2026, and it’s built on the same three pillars.

It also covers something most school policies haven’t caught up with: it shines a light on emerging threats, including AI-related abuse. Generated images, cloned voices and edited video simply aren’t in the vocabulary of a policy written before 2024. A series of webinars for parents and teachers is planned for September — dates weren’t published when this was written, so the campaign page is where to check.

The toolkit outlasts the campaign

The campaign ends on 25 September. Its toolkit doesn’t, and that’s the part to keep.

It gathers more than 190 resources on cyberbullying, compiled by the network of Safer Internet Centres across Europe. It’s free, it filters by country and language, and it’s sorted by who’s reading: someone being targeted, someone watching it happen, and the adults around them — parents, guardians, teachers and educators.

That third grouping is rarer than it sounds. Most cyberbullying material is written either for children or for policymakers. Every member state also has a Safer Internet Centre giving free advice, and locating your own country’s takes about a minute.

What a school can do before the end of September

None of this needs a budget or a project application:

• Record your national contact. Find your country’s Safer Internet Centre and write its details into your anti-bullying policy, so the contact exists before someone needs it.
• Read your policy against the three pillars. Ask whether your reporting and support side is as developed as your prevention side, or whether it amounts to one sentence about telling a form tutor.
• Check for the AI gap. See whether your policy says anything about generated images or cloned voices. If it doesn’t, the toolkit is where the material is.

The campaign gives you a reason to put this on an agenda this month. The toolkit gives you something to work from afterwards.

If cyberbullying is a gap your staff want to work on properly rather than in a single training day, our Cyber Bullying course is built around these same three pillars and ends with a written intervention protocol for your school. Browse it alongside our other structured courses, or start a registration once you know which activity fits.