The Member States’ interior ministers will meet in Luxembourg on Thursday 13 June for a Home Affairs Council to take stock of a series of dossiers, including the regulation on the removal of child sexual abuse material online (CSAM) and the implementation of the Pact on Migration and Asylum.
On Wednesday 12 June, the Commission will present a plan for implementing this vast reform, which is due to come into force in 2026.
The meeting will also provide an opportunity to carry out a fitness check on the Schengen area and to approve a Political Declaration on the commitment of the Member States to preserve the area of free movement and to re-establish internal border controls only as a last resort.
The final Declaration was still being finalised on Tuesday 11 June, with the Belgian Presidency of the EU Council seeking to consolidate the language on Bulgaria and Romania.
The question of full Schengen membership for these two countries is due to be raised again on Thursday, but according to one diplomat, no breakthrough is to be expected, as Austria is maintaining its veto and is expected to hold to this line until the country's parliamentary elections, scheduled for the end of September.
In connection with Schengen, the ministers will also discuss visa policy and the rise in asylum applications lodged in the EU by people who entered under visa exemption programmes or with valid visas.
However, one of the most sensitive issues will remain the ‘CSAM’ regulation. The Belgian Presidency will present a progress report to the ministers, with an update on the latest attempts to reach a partial agreement (the location of the future EU Centre for CSAM content remains to be determined, making it impossible to reach a complete General Approach).
Depending on the discussions, it will decide whether it is in a position to draw up a new draft compromise and reach an agreement before the end of June.
France could tip the balance in favour of a qualified majority, but countries like Germany will remain difficult to convince, as they are opposed to legislation that could jeopardise the confidentiality of communications and end-to-end encryption.
In its report, the Presidency returns to the approach followed: it has “concentrated its efforts on responding to concerns expressed by some delegations regarding the proportionality and targeting of detection orders and related to cyber security. [It] suggested [...] enhanced risk assessment and risk categorisation of services to make detection orders more targeted and protecting cyber security and encrypted data, while keeping services using end-to-end encryption within the scope of detection orders. Subsequently, delegations worked on developing a methodology for determining the risk of specific services based on a set of objective criteria (related to the size, type and core architecture of the service, the provider’s policies and safety by design functionalities and a mapping of users’ tendencies).”
At the end of this risk categorisation process, systems or parts of systems are classified as “high risk”, “medium risk” or “low risk”.
The “Presidency proposed to keep services using end-to-end encryption in the scope of detection orders issued to high-risk services, under the condition that this would not oblige providers to create access to end-to-end encrypted data and that the technologies used for detection are vetted with regard to their effectiveness, their impact on fundamental rights and risks to cyber security”.
On the ‘Pact on Asylum’, one of the possible points of discussion will be the commitment of the Hungarian Presidency of the EU Council to support the technical work of implementation, while the Member States are to receive specific European funds.
The Hungarian Presidency has promised to act as facilitator, but Hungary, like Poland, is opposed to this Pact and is raising doubts about its intentions at a time when it has blocked a whole series of crucial decisions for the EU, for example on Ukraine.
Among other issues, the ministers will be asked to give the green light to a one-year extension of the temporary protection offered to 4.2 million Ukrainians currently in the EU. The fight against drug trafficking and crime will also be the subject of an information item based on a progress report.
Link to the report on the ‘CSAM’ regulation: https://aeur.eu/f/clt
Link to the report on the fight against drug trafficking and crime: https://aeur.eu/f/clv (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)