Interinstitutional negotiations on the provisional derogation from the rules on confidentiality on the internet to fight child pornography will have to continue. The meeting on Tuesday 9 March was not conclusive. According to a 5 March version of the four-column document, seen by EUROPE, several issues, such as terms and timing, are still open.
“The EU Council and the European Parliament have made progress on most of the issues and have decided to continue discussions at technical level in order to prepare the next trilogue”, a European source said after the meeting.
The purpose of this text is to introduce a derogation from the confidentiality rules contained in the e-Privacy Directive (2002/58/EC) in order to allow calling, messaging or e-mail services on the internet to continue to detect and report child sexual abuse content on a voluntary basis (see EUROPE 12557/13, 12575/25). Since 21 December, they have been covered by the new Electronic Communications Code (2018/1972).
On the basis of the four-column document, the negotiators agreed that the regulation should not apply to audio communications or drop the ratio (of 1 in 50 million) proposed by the Parliament to determine the maximum margin of error of a technology. At a technical meeting, they nevertheless agreed that nothing in the future regulation could prohibit or weaken end-to-end encryption.
Among the issues still open is the question of whether to use the term ‘derogation’ or ‘restriction’ in the title, or the period until which this temporary treatment should apply (Parliament wants 2022, EU Council 2025).
The next technical meeting will take place next week and a fourth trilogue should take place at the end of March, we are told.
Link to the four-column document: http://bit.ly/200258EC (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)