Germany's opposition halts EU plan to combat child sexual abuse material online

EU countries have failed to agree on measures that aim to fight the spread of child sexual abuse material online via so-called chat control.

Germany’s "no" to the latest proposal during a discussion with EU countries on Wednesday was decisive in taking it off next week’s agenda for a meeting of EU justice ministers.

However, it quickly became clear that there was no majority for the plans as they stand, sources familiar with the matter told Euronews.

One of the most controversial points – which obliges messaging services such as WhatsApp, Telegram and Signal to scan messages and check for images, videos and URLs that might contain child abuse content – remains the main sticking point.

In 2022, the European Commission presented its plan – dubbed CSAM – to fight the spread of child sexual abuse material online. Data by the Commission suggested that in 2023 alone, there were 1.3 million reports of child sexual abuse in the EU, which included more than 3.4 million images and videos.

According to the EU executive, voluntary detection methods by digital companies were not sufficient, and on top of that, service providers face different rules in each country. 

The Commission's proposal has been heavily debated since.

The European Parliament has already voted for major changes that would roll back the most far-reaching parts of the draft. In late 2023, its civil liberties committee adopted a position that rejected generalised and indiscriminate scanning and explicitly sought to protect end-to-end encryption.

On the member states' side, governments have expressed concerns about the protection of fundamental rights, privacy and cybersecurity, and remain divided.

Scanning end-to-end encrypted messages?

The text currently on the table for negotiation allows the scanning of text messages to check whether they spread child sexual abuse material, through end-to-end encrypted message services.

Those in favour of the current plans include Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Hungary and Ireland. Austria, Finland, Poland, Germany and the Netherlands are among the opponents.

In a statement on Wednesday, Germany’s Minister of Justice and Consumer Protection Stefanie Hubig said that chat control “must be a taboo in a state governed by the rule of law.”

“Private communication must never be under general suspicion,” she said, adding that “the state must also not force messengers to scan messages en-masse for suspicious content before sending them.”

The Dutch government said in a letter to parliament late September that the current proposal failed to address its concerns about the protection of fundamental rights at stake, “particularly in the areas of privacy and the confidentiality of correspondence and telecommunications, and the security of the digital domain.”

Privacy groups have previously warned about the measures, including European Digital Rights (EDRI), an international advocacy group, which said this would mean “deploying personalised spyware to millions of people’s devices.” 

Denmark, which is chairing the rotating meetings of the EU ministers, could put forward a revised proposal. The work will now continue at technical level.

In the absence of a deal, temporary rules stemming from the existing e-privacy directive are in place, allowing providers of online messaging services to voluntarily use specific technologies to detect and remove illegal material. EU lawmakers and governments agreed to extend them last year until 3 April 2026.

Even when an agreement is reached, the file would still have to enter inter-institutional negotiations: the European Parliament, the member states and the Commission need to agree before it can become law. This could potentially further delay the process.