Several Member States adjusted their reception frameworks, introducing more child-focused procedures and specialised support to better identify and support unaccompanied children and address gaps in the system. For example, according to the government’s National Register of Administrative Procedures, Greece regulated the operation and licensing of reception centres and semi-independent living apartments for unaccompanied children, while between February and July 2025 the ECtHR had to grant interim measures in four cases to protect 71 unaccompanied children from inadequate reception conditions in the hotspots of Samos and Leros (paragraph 32, Committee of Miniters’ execution of judgements). According to a June 2025 EUAA reportEUAA report, Bulgaria opened another safe zone for unaccompanied children in the Harmanli centre with 98 places, expandable to 200 in times of crisis.

Belgium, through an AMIF funded project (2023–2025), developed a tool to assess the child friendliness of reception centres, embedding child rights criteria into reception monitoring and quality control, according to the European Migration Network. Denmark amended the Aliens Act in December 2024 to ensure that children affected by forced marriages are assigned a representative.

Spain confronted severe overcapacity in the Canary Islands and Ceuta, where the protection systems operate at more than three times their ordinary capacity. Authorities adopted in March 2025 a decree to create a structural redistribution mechanism for unaccompanied migrant children based on a declaration of “extraordinary migratory contingency”, entailing mandatory interregional transfers according to population, and a one year deadline to complete the transfers following an August 2025 decree which defines the ordinary capacity thresholds of each autonomous community.

See section 10 for information on immigration detention of children.

The EU funded European Guardianship Network, formed by guardianship authorities, local agencies, NGOs and EU and international organisations, continued its efforts to coordinate and provide assistance to guardianship authorities in Member States, setting quality standards and sharing best practices.

The Council of Europe's implementation review of Recommendation CM/Rec(2019)11 of December 2024 documented partial progress on guardianship for unaccompanied children but flagged systemic gaps, such as delayed appointments, insufficient guardianship training, role overlaps with immigration authorities, and absent caseload limits across systems.

For example, in Austria, delays in the appointment of guardians continue to receive criticism from the Austrian Ombudsman Board, in January 2026, while a draft law on guardianship for unaccompanied children was published in early March 2026 for public consultation. In Greece, which launched in January 2024 a guardianship system under Law 5038/2023 in cooperation with two civil society organisations, there were delays in appointing guardians in some initial reception facilities, according to Save the Children and the Greek Council for Refugees.

In Belgium, preparatory work for the implementation of the Pact on Migration and Asylum focused, with the support of the European Commission, on improving the guardianship service through a gap analysis, increased guardianship recruitment and several pilot projects to ensure the early appointment of a guardian.

Age assessment remained a central legal and practical issue. According to Article 25 (2) of the Asylum Procedure Regulation, medical examinations to determine the applicants’ age should be used as a measure of last resort. However, a March 2026 EUAA report on age assessments shows that none of the 15 Member States that provided information used non-medical methods to assess age. The EUAA published the third edition of its Practical Guide on Age Assessment in November 2025, which elaborates on the different age assessment methodologies, including non-medical ones. 

At national level, Malta amended in December 2025 its legislation to permit medical age assessment where doubts persist, coupled with an explicit presumption of minority, unless identity documents conclusively prove adulthood. In 2024, Sweden further refined its medical age assessment model by introducing a detailed eight-stage wisdom tooth classification, a development that continues to attract scrutiny from medical and human rights bodies.

Case law has highlighted that deficient age assessment procedures can amount to violations of fundamental rights. In the January 2025 case A.C. v. France , the ECtHR found a violation of Article 8 of the ECHR due to procedural shortcomings, including incomplete and imprecise information provided to the applicant, inadequate reasoning, and lack of respect for the margin of error in age assessments. Similarly, in March 2025 in the case F.B. v. Belgium it condemned procedural flaws, reinforcing the presumption of minority and the child’s best interests under Article 8 of the ECHR. In Italy, the EUAA reported that the Supreme Court of Cassation clarified in October 2025 that in detention validation proceedings involving a person claiming to be a child, courts must apply safeguards. They must give the benefit of the doubt where age is uncertain and suspend proceedings treating the person as an adult pending the juvenile court’s decision on the child’s age. In Spain, the Supreme Court ruled on 29 January 2026, that in cases of age uncertainty for migrant youth, minority status must be presumed in line with Article 12.4 of Organic Law 1/1996 of 15 January. Official documents and the lower age resulting from medical tests must be prioritised over broad forensic estimates.