Negotiators on the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties expressed their bitterness on Wednesday 18 March after talks with the Cyprus Presidency of the EU Council on extending the derogation from the ePrivacy Directive failed (see EUROPE 13829/19).
The political deadlock on Monday evening prevented any renewal of this exceptional regime, which enables communications platforms to detect online child sexual abuse material. As a result, the current derogation will come to an end on 3 April, creating a legal vacuum before the adoption of a permanent regulation on combating child sexual abuse material (CSAM).
Birgit Sippel (S&D, German), the rapporteur on this dossier, condemned the “total lack of flexibility” shown by the Member States, saying she was “speechless” as the discussions unfolded. In her view, the European Parliament had no “room for manoeuvre” to move towards an EU Council stubbornly clinging to a mandate that ruled out any restriction on the scope of the measure. MEPs were in favour of limiting ‘scanning’ to content that was already known (see EUROPE 13826/6).
For his part, Javier Zarzalejos, Spanish rapporteur for the EPP, deplored the EU Council’s inability to go beyond a “very limited mandate”, describing this as a “failure in our responsibility to provide a legal framework”. He is concerned about dependence on national legislation deemed “not sufficient and fragmented”.
He is now banking on the rapid finalisation of the CSAM Regulation, for which the inter-institutional negotiations are “progressing at a good pace”, with an outcome expected “in the next few months”. The next meeting is scheduled for 11 May. (Original version in French by Justine Manaud)