The European Parliament voted this Wednesday in favor of modifying the provisional rules that allow the scanning of private communications in the EU, introducing limits to the so-called chat control.
From now on, these measures must be restricted to specific cases under judicial authorization, instead of maintaining the system of generalized supervision defended by the European Commission and several Member States.
The vote comes within the extension of the temporary framework approved in 2021 to combat child sexual abuse material online (CSAM), which was supposed to be replaced by permanent legislation that has still not been agreed.
Faced with the risk that the rules would expire in April, Brussels had proposed extending them until 2028 without substantial changes, but a majority in the Parliament chose to accept the extension while introducing modifications considered key.
The approved text removes the reference to proactive scanning of messages and limits any monitoring to specific users or groups for whom there is a founded suspicion and authorization from a judicial authority.
It also establishes that the measures must not apply to services using end-to-end encryption, one of the most controversial points of the debate. This is undoubtedly a more than substantial change compared to the initial proposal.
Patrick Breyer, former MEP for the Pirate Party and one of the most prominent critics of the proposal, said that “the warrantless screening of our digital communications must remain taboo in a democratic society,” arguing that mass monitoring produces large amounts of irrelevant data, overloads law-enforcement authorities and does not necessarily improve the protection of minors. He added that investigations should focus on specific suspects under judicial authorisation rather than on the general population.
The decision means an institutional clash, as neither the European Commission nor the Council supported modifying the current regime—since what they were interested in was precisely full control.
Several governments consider that maintaining broad detection tools is essential for the fight against child exploitation online, while a majority in Parliament argues that the proposed model poses risks for privacy and fundamental rights.
Among the groups most active against maintaining mass scanning has been Patriots for Europe, whose MEPs have repeatedly warned that the system could become a precedent for generalized surveillance in the Union.
From this group, it has been argued that the prosecution of crimes must be based on targeted investigations under judicial control, not on the systematic analysis of private communications of millions of citizens.
They have also criticized that the model promoted by the Commission gave large technology platforms a central role in content detection, by allowing private companies to analyze users’ messages and images in order to report them to authorities, something they consider problematic from both a legal and political point of view.
Despite the setback suffered in this vote, in Brussels it is taken for granted that the debate on chat control is far from over. The Commission maintains its intention to approve a permanent framework, and several Member States continue to defend a broader system of supervision, so similar proposals may reappear during negotiations on the final regulation or through future legislative initiatives.
