The European Parliament has failed to stop platforms from scanning private messages for child abuse material until 2028 after a motion to reject the rules fell short of the 361 votes required.

The EU’s Chat Control message-scanning regime will continue despite the fact that most lawmakers who cast a ballot want the rules gone. No private messaging in the EU

Former MEP and Pirate Party privacy campaigner Patrick Breyer, revealed that during the recent European Parliament vote, 314 members voted against the EU’s chat control rules while 276 backed it.

There were 17 abstentions, and because rejecting the measure needed an absolute majority of the full chamber rather than a simple majority of those present, the 314 opposing votes were not enough.

A separate amendment to limit message scanning to suspects flagged by courts also drew more support than opposition, 322 to 255, and similarly the majority lost.

Due to the outcome of the vote, “Chat Control 1.0,” which was temporarily paused after EU institutions could not agree to extend it, will now be revived. It is a temporary exception that lets U.S. tech firms scan direct messages on services such as Instagram, Discord, Snapchat, Gmail and iCloud without a warrant or prior suspicion.

EU Parliament fails to block Chat Control, extending message scanning to 2028 Story by Hannah Collymore • 1h • 3 min read EU Parliament fails to block Chat Control, extending message scanning to 2028

The European Parliament has failed to stop platforms from scanning private messages for child abuse material until 2028 after a motion to reject the rules fell short of the 361 votes required.

The EU’s Chat Control message-scanning regime will continue despite the fact that most lawmakers who cast a ballot want the rules gone. No private messaging in the EU

Former MEP and Pirate Party privacy campaigner Patrick Breyer, revealed that during the recent European Parliament vote, 314 members voted against the EU’s chat control rules while 276 backed it.

There were 17 abstentions, and because rejecting the measure needed an absolute majority of the full chamber rather than a simple majority of those present, the 314 opposing votes were not enough.

A separate amendment to limit message scanning to suspects flagged by courts also drew more support than opposition, 322 to 255, and similarly the majority lost.

Due to the outcome of the vote, “Chat Control 1.0,” which was temporarily paused after EU institutions could not agree to extend it, will now be revived. It is a temporary exception that lets U.S. tech firms scan direct messages on services such as Instagram, Discord, Snapchat, Gmail and iCloud without a warrant or prior suspicion. Related video: Watch how the EU's new age verification app could change the internet forever (EU MADE SIMPLE) View on WatchView on Watch EU MADE SIMPLE Watch how the EU's new age verification app could change the internet forever to his phone. Let's call him little Tommy. Current Time 0:07 / Duration 9:59 0

The proposal was brought back for a vote by the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP). Parliament President Roberta Metsola, who is an EPP member, asked EU leaders to restart discussions at the last European Council meeting. Four European commissioners also wrote to MEPs, urging them to pass the proposal.

Metsola’s office said she was following a decision made by group leaders, but several lawmakers who worked on the issue said they were not told about this in advance.

Simeon de Brouwer from the digital rights group EDRi told Euractiv that the Parliament had been “backstabbed by its own president.” Rand Hammoud from the Centre for Democracy and Technology Europe said that using the largest political group’s power to force a new vote on a measure that had already failed “should concern anyone who cares about institutional integrity.”

Privacy advocates like Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin have also campaigned against the measure.

“Fight Chat Control. You cannot make society secure by making people insecure,” Buterin wrote on X in September 2025. He argued that backdoors into private communication are “inevitably hackable.” NFT collector and free-speech advocate 6529 amplified a Buterin post opposing the renewed push on July 8.

Notably, a 2024 draft leaked to French outlet Contexte and flagged by Breyer showed EU interior ministers seeking to exempt the professional accounts of police, military and intelligence staff from the same scanning they wanted to impose on the public.

Buterin says that is evidence that officials know the tools are unreliable. Why are platforms scanning messages?

The regulation, formally the Child Sexual Abuse Regulation, was proposed by then-Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson in May 2022. Supporters, including the Commission’s own home affairs directorate, argue that voluntary detection by platforms leaves gaps and that the EU relies too heavily on the United States to flag abuse happening inside the bloc.

Opponents counter that scanning everyone’s messages amounts to mass surveillance. The Council of the EU’s own legal service has warned that the approach conflicts with the right to privacy, and a European Parliament study concluded there is no way to detect abuse material at scale without a high rate of false positives.

Breyer cited German federal police figures showing that 48% of alerts are not criminally relevant in the first place, and pointed to EU Commission data indicating scanning of private chats produced only 36% of abuse reports in 2024.

Breyer called the result “a farce” that “damages democracy,” but said the fight over a permanent version was “just getting started.” A symbolic carve-out was added for encrypted chats, though, as Breyer noted, services like WhatsApp were never scanned to begin with.

Talks on the permanent framework, called Chat Control 2.0, resume in September.

Continue Reading Here - https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/eu-parliament-fails-to-block-chat-control-extending-message-scanning-to-2028/ar-AA27zlor

Cross posted from https://feddit.uk/post/51440643

🚨 A shocking backroom deal is underway to revive Chat Control 1.0 this Friday — and on Monday 29 June, the final trilogue for permanent mass scanning takes place. We face a double-attack on private communication. Take two minutes now: e-mail your MEPs and Permanent Representation to stop this!

https://fightchatcontrol.eu/

Cross posted from https://feddit.uk/post/51290449

The European Parliament president’s power play is “without precedent,” diplomats wrote in a note seen by POLITICO.

BRUSSELS — European Parliament President Roberta Metsola is trying to push through a controversial law on scanning child abuse content online even though it has been repeatedly slapped down by her own chamber, according to a document seen by POLITICO.

In a step that diplomats deem “without precedent,” the top EU politician has asked member countries in the Council to approve a bill that her own Parliament shot down in a plenary vote in March.

At stake is whether the EU allows tech platforms to voluntarily scan their services for child sexual abuse material (CSAM). The issue has been mired in controversy, with police and child rights advocates and European commissioners arguing that a lack of legislation allows predators and pedophiles to operate with impunity online. Privacy campaigners, meanwhile, have argued the proposals could lead to unacceptable mass surveillance and the end of encryption.

Ambassadors on Friday will consider an “invitation of the President of the European Parliament [to] proceed with the Council’s first reading position” on the proposal to allow tech companies to choose to scan for CSAM, said a note by the Cyprus presidency of the Council of the EU dated June 22.

In the note, Cyprus asked capitals to “carefully consider” the invitation, “even if this would be without precedent in the present circumstances."

Talks between the Parliament and the Council collapsed in March, just days before the temporary legislation was due to expire. Lawmakers in the Parliament later resisted last-ditch pressure from German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, four European commissioners, tech giants Meta, Google and Microsoft and numerous children’s charities, eventually voting down an attempt to pass the bill in March by a margin of 311 to 228 with 92 abstentions.

A spokesperson for Metsola said the issue was "raised and asked for" at a meeting of heads of the Parliament's political groups.

An EU parliament official said the European People's Party, the group to which Metsola belongs, raised it and no groups objected. The official was granted anonymity to disclose confidential details of the meeting.

Lawmakers working on the legislation now feel Metsola has gone over their heads to invite the Council to adopt a position that the Parliament had already rejected, according to two Parliamentary aides.

Markéta Gregorová, a Czech lawmaker with the Greens group in the Parliament and shadow lead lawmaker on the law, described herself as “extremely surprised” by the move and said Metsola’s invitation is “unacceptable and undermines the European Parliament position.”

Hilde Vautmans, a Belgian lawmaker with the liberal Renew group and shadow lead lawmaker on the file, said reopening debate on the temporary law is a “political dead end.” “Parliament has rejected it twice, and that will not change,” she said.

Spokesperson for the liberal Renew group Nick Petre said it was "concerned" the move to reopen negotiations could weaken Parliament's position to negotiate rules on child sexual abuse material. "After trilogue negotiations on the interim file failed, it is difficult to see how reviving that process now would bring us closer to a lasting solution. On the contrary, it could delay progress on the comprehensive legislation that victims, law enforcement and online platforms all need," he said.

The invitation to ambassadors to proceed has not been previously reported. Close the legal gap

The European Commission proposed the temporary CSAM bill as a stopgap measure to allow companies to scan while legislators agreed on a more permanent solution.

As talks stalled on the latter, legislators were working to extend the former — at least until the dispute over the stopgap measure came to a head earlier this year. The Council and the Parliament couldn’t agree on terms to extend it, so the law lapsed in early April and companies were left without a legal basis for voluntary scanning.

Tech firms continued to scan, despite the legal limbo.

Metsola called publicly to look at “how to find an agreement on a second reading of this file,” in an address to EU leaders last week.

Cyprus in Monday’s note said there was a “pressing need” to close that legal gap. It said it “takes note of the political signal from the President of the European Parliament to encourage continuing the work on the proposal.”

If capitals choose to adopt their position, the law does not automatically pass: The Parliament would need to either accept it or re-enter negotiations. “There is no certainty that [the Parliament] would adopt the legislative act in second reading in line with the Council’s first reading position,” Cyprus wrote in the note.

Gregorová rejected the suggestion that lawmakers would budge. “The Parliament mandate is clear: A majority voted it down, meaning that we reject the extension.”

According to EU procedures, if capitals and the Parliament continue to disagree, they could move to a rare procedure known as conciliation.

Lawmakers will meet next Monday for a political negotiation on the other, permanent bill to tackle CSAM, continue reading HERE