The Council of the European Union reached agreement on a alleged chat regulation to defend children and minors from sexual abuse. The task has sparked controversy over the anticipation of mass surveillance of EU citizens by analysing private content on digital platforms. The subject of the fresh censorship thought commented Ordo Iuris Institute.
The EU is launching private chat surveillance. The agreement reached by the Council of the European Union concerns the European Commission presented in May 2022 Draft Regulation laying down rules to prevent and combat the sexual abuse of children. The request to adopt specified rules was motivated by the request to defend minors more effectively, to increase cases of sexual abuse of children during the COVID-19 pandemic and to neglect to adapt the current rules to specified challenges.
The European Commission's proposal has been controversial from the outset. Experts and critics, representing a broad spectrum of ideas, accused the European Commission that, under the pretext of protecting children and minors, it would let the effective surveillance of citizens of the associate States of the Union.
The legislative proposal was based on the presumption that any action, information, message, any file placed on digital platforms would be seen as a possible threat requiring examination of what would be a survey of the content. Consequently, in accordance with the draft regulation, all these contents should be decoded and evaluated, including information sent between employees and commercial correspondence between traders.
Members of the current Polish government besides objected to mass scanning of private correspondence. "Poland's representatives have repeatedly stressed the request to keep a balance between effectively preventing the dissemination of kid sexual abuse material (CSAM) and protecting the fundamental rights of users, specified as the right to privacy and safety on the Internet", wrote the in the Communication published in mid-September this year on the website of the Ministry of Digital Affairs.
As a consequence of the controversy accompanying the first version of the Regulation, in November 2023, which was part of the European Parliament of the Committee on civilian Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (Committee on civilian Liberty, Justice and Home Affairs, LIBE) accepted amended draft legislation. The EP has introduced a number of crucial changes, including the removal of the provisions on mass surveillance and users' privacy contained in the first draft regulation.
The proposals for amendments made to the draft regulation greatly softened its provisions, but there were inactive provisions which raised crucial doubts. In July 2025, the Danish Presidency presented next project, which proposed, inter alia, the addition of hazard categories (in 3 groups).
The text besides introduces proposals for provisions to defend the privacy of net service users (agreements of judicial authorities or independent administrative authorities to issue orders to detect and delete CSAM content. Child Sexual Abuse Materials, or content depicting the sexual exploitation of children). This project, despite any affirmative elements, has besides continued to make controversy.
Finally, the Council of the European Union managed to accomplish agreement on this matter. The fresh draft regulation introduces a number of crucial changes. It provides for an work on online service providers to measure whether the services they supply are utilized to distribute CSAM material.
Based on this assessment, they will gotta implement appropriate measures to reduce this risk, including providing tools for users to study sexual abuse of children on the net or to introduce default privacy settings for children. The analysis of these assessments would be carried out by the national authorities designated by the States, which would be entitled to issue removal orders and to destruct them from the search results. The draft regulation besides provides for the anticipation of imposing fines on suppliers of cash.
It besides includes provisions requiring companies providing online services to aid victims of sexual abuse to remove or block material on which they have content. To this end, victims will be able, in accordance with the project's provisions, to address the forthcoming EU Centre for the Sexual usage of Children (EU Centre on kid Sexual Abuse).
This agency will be tasked with supporting associate States and online service providers in the implementation of the Regulation. The Centre is to measure and process information from net service providers on perceived CSAM materials and to create, keep and operate a database with requests from suppliers.
The draft regulation adopted by the EU Council met with mixed opinions. On 1 side On Telepolis portal It was stressed that "instead of invasive scanning, the burden of work has been shifted to a hazard analysis" while stressing that "there is no... command to read our chats through algorithms".
"I think a compromise has been reached in the Council of the EU by moving the implementation of the decoding of net communication, if any, to the far future and only with the agreement of regulators", he stressed on WNP. Piotr Mieczkowski. "This is simply a de facto win for those against chat control," said the Managing manager of Digital Poland Foundation.
On the another hand, experts and the media note that the current task inactive carries many risks. In the CIS text cited, Ella Jakubowska of European Digital Rights stated that the position of the Council of the EU is simply a major step towards excluding the coercion of mass scanning of online messages and attempts to weaken encryption. She stressed that "at this phase it is simply a political message alternatively than a real guarantee".
“Current “security” in the Council text is not yet adequate to warrant this [protection of encryption]” said the expert. A akin opinion was presented by Patrick Beyer, a erstwhile German MEP, who stated that the proposal contained "hidden dangers" and even voluntary consent to scanning platforms would lead to a "legalisation" of this mechanism.
The position adopted in the Council of the European Union will service as the basis for negotiations with the European Parliament to establish the final wording of the draft. I anticipate the institutions of the European Union to scope an agreement on this before April 2026, as they will then apply provisional provisions, on the basis of which platforms can freely search the CSAM content network. These provisions were to apply until August 2024, but due to the deficiency of expected advancement in the work on "chat control", its validity was extended until April 2026.
The Internet's Censorship has been tormented for years by the European nations under the noble slogans of protecting children from pedophiles. This task fits into this idea.
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