On Wednesday 31 May, Member States discussed the orders for detecting child pornography content in interpersonal communications, which are included in the Commission’s Regulation on the removal of child sexual abuse material from the Internet, presented in May 2022.
According to one source, they confirmed the objectives of the Commission’s proposal, despite the opinion of the Legal Service of the Council of the EU, which stated at the end of April that the text as it stood violated fundamental rights (see EUROPE 13176/3).
A large group of countries said they were in favour of maintaining these detection orders for interpersonal communications (private messaging services, for example), but an equally large number of delegations took account of the questions raised by the Legal Service and asked to work on a better balance between the proposal and the principles of proportionality and protection of privacy, without calling into question the ambition of the text, according to another source.
The Member States have also confirmed their wish to see audio content included in the child sexual abuse material covered by the regulation. The Legal Service of the Council of the EU also took the view that this type of equipment should not be covered. On end-to-end encryption of private communications, while some Member States are tempted to work on ways of circumventing this technique, others have reiterated their desire not to weaken this key principle of confidentiality of communications.
Technical work will continue on this basis. The Swedish Presidency of the Council of the EU had not envisaged obtaining a general approach at the ‘Home Affairs’ Council on 8 June. The text could nevertheless be finalised under the Spanish Presidency, according to one source. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)