The Belgian Presidency of the Council of the EU had to withdraw the regulation on the removal of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) from the agenda of the meeting of the permanent representatives of the Member States to the EU on Thursday 20 June, due to the lack of a qualified majority.
The Presidency had put this item on the agenda at a time when certain Member States, such as France, had indicated last week in Luxembourg that they might support the text if further details were provided, for example on encryption protection technologies.
However, according to a source, on Thursday morning the Presidency noted that it did not have sufficient support for this regulation that organises a form of surveillance of private messages exchanged via messaging services. It will therefore continue with consultations. On 14 June, it presented its partial general approach (the location of the future EU centre for combating this material has yet to be decided), as published by Netzpolitik.
The day before, the German Minister for the Interior, Nancy Faeser, had called on the Member States to reject this text, which was considered to still be too intrusive of privacy. “We reject ‘chat control’. Germany will vote ‘no’ at the EU Council if the current proposal is maintained. We must also use European instruments to protect children from sexual violence, but in a targeted way that respects the rule of law”, she commented on X.
The text’s defenders argue that ‘chat control’ already exists and is entirely under the control of private groups. The regulation, they argue, would provide a framework for these groups.
Link to general approach: https://aeur.eu/f/cr4 (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)