On Friday 6 December, the Member States’ representatives to the EU will attempt to reach agreement on the Hungarian Presidency’s partial draft political agreement (general approach) on the Regulation to prevent and combat child sexual abuse which includes the removal of online child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and to enter into direct negotiations with the European Parliament which has already adopted its 2023 mandate (see EUROPE 13292/10).
On Wednesday 4 December, they had already agreed on the draft general approach to the directive on the definition of criminal offences for these same crimes.
The regulation proposed for May 2022 remains the most controversial, however, and was initially also due to be discussed on 4 December.
On Friday, the Hungarian Presidency will submit to the Member States the same text as in October (see EUROPE 13500/9), which had not been approved by the Member States.
The draft general approach has not been amended since, but the Hungarian Presidency hopes that positions will have evolved. However, according to one source, “the situation is more or less the same”.
In October, France was presented as a country that could support the text, but it no longer has a government, while countries such as Germany and the Netherlands are very sceptical.
In the general approach proposal dated 29 November, seen by Agence Europe, the Presidency summarises the main efforts made in this area.
With regard to orders to detect child sexual abuse material, which is the most controversial point because it involves a system for monitoring potentially encrypted private communications on the internet, the Presidency explains that it has added additional safeguards to protect cyber security and ensure proportionality and respect for fundamental rights, while preserving the objectives and effectiveness of the regulation.
An enhanced risk assessment and risk categorization of services is introduced with a methodology for determining the risk of specific services based on a series of objective criteria (related to the size, type and basic architecture of the service, vendor policies and security features by design, as well as a mapping of user trends); at the end of this risk categorization process, systems or parts of systems will be classified as ‘high risk’, ‘medium risk’ or ‘low risk’. The Hungarian Presidency also points out that the scope of detection orders is limited to visual content and URLs, while text and audio content are excluded.
A number of amendments have been made to the directive (see EUROPE 13344/8), such as the inclusion of the crime of disseminating child sexual abuse material in the definition of “sexual abuse offences”. Incitement to commit sexual abuse of children, sexual exploitation or the solicitation of children for sexual purposes are also included in the definitions and penalties, as are the solicitation of children (‘grooming’), the solicitation of live broadcasts and the exploitation of an online service to broadcast.
The text also adapts the limitation periods, of at least 10 years from the date on which the victim reached the age of 18, for crimes punishable by at least five years of imprisonment, and of at least 20 years from the date on which the victim reached the age of 18, for crimes punishable by at least 10 years of imprisonment.
Link to the partial general approach on the CSAM regulation: https://aeur.eu/f/enm
Link to the draft general approach on the CSAM directive: https://aeur.eu/f/enl (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic with Anne Damiani)