Strasbourg: The European Parliament revived the disputed chat control regime on 9 July 2026, clearing the way to extend a temporary law that lets online platforms scan private messages for child sexual abuse material even though more MEPs in the room voted against it than for it.
The outcome hinged on parliamentary arithmetic. A total of 314 MEPs voted to reject the Council’s position, against 276 who backed it, but second-reading rules required an absolute majority of 361 to kill the measure. Because absent lawmakers count in effect as consent, the chat control extension survived despite a majority of those present opposing it.
Parliament had fast-tracked the vote days earlier, invoking an urgent procedure on 7 July to settle the file before the current derogation lapsed. The revived text lets service providers keep voluntarily detecting, reporting and removing abuse material until 2028, buying time while a permanent regulation stalls.
Lawmakers softened one of the fiercest objections. Alongside the main vote, MEPs adopted an amendment shielding end-to-end encrypted services from the scanning derogation, an attempt to answer warnings that the rules could break secure messaging for everyone.
Parliament enters these negotiations with a strong mandate, one supported by all political groups, said Javier Zarzalejos, the EPP lawmaker chairing the Civil Liberties Committee and steering the file.
Critics were unconvinced. Digital rights campaigners have long branded the framework a vehicle for suspicionless mass surveillance, arguing that scanning everyone’s messages to catch a few offenders inverts the presumption of innocence.
Former MEP and privacy campaigner Patrick Breyer captured the anger of opponents, calling the result a farce that damages democracy because the measure advanced against the will of the majority of voting members.
The dispute exposes a genuine clash of fundamental rights. Supporters, including child-protection groups and many national governments, insist platforms must keep the tools that flag grooming and abuse imagery, warning that letting the derogation expire would blind investigators overnight. Opponents counter that mandatory or incentivised scanning erodes privacy, chills free expression and sets a precedent authoritarian states could copy.
The current fight has deep roots. The temporary derogation first took effect in 2021 as a stop-gap after new privacy rules would otherwise have banned the voluntary scanning that platforms such as Meta and Google already ran. Lawmakers have extended it repeatedly while the permanent regulation, first proposed by the Commission in 2022, remains gridlocked between institutions that cannot agree on how far detection should go.
National governments are split as well. Several capitals back mandatory detection orders that could compel companies to scan for known abuse imagery, while others echo Parliament in warning that such orders would undermine encryption and invite legal challenge before the EU courts.
The saga is far from over. The 2028 sunset merely postpones the harder fight over a permanent Child Sexual Abuse Regulation, where Parliament and the Council still disagree over whether detection should ever be mandatory. Details of the plenary decision sit on the European Parliament’s press room, and the broader battle over chat control will define how far Europe lets the state reach into encrypted conversations.
