Setback for the Commission: EU MEPs let chat control fail

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The EU Commission's plans for a renewed extension of the voluntary chat control provision provisionally failed on Monday evening. In a decision that surprised even seasoned observers in Brussels' political circles, the European Parliament's Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) voted against the proposal. By 38 votes to 28, with three abstentions, the committee rejected the proposal to extend the controversial exception to the data protection directive for electronic communications one more time.

Actually, the vote was considered a formality. This was due to the significant pressure from the member states and the Commission in the fight against the dissemination of child sexual abuse material.

However, the Commission's calculation to push the Parliament into approval through a last-minute submission and artificially created time pressure did not pay off. The MEPs showed little inclination to abandon their previous stance. This involved not extending the provisional arrangement again, but instead finding a permanent regulation. This should exclusively permit targeted measures in cases of concrete suspicion.

Already since 2021, a "temporary exception" from the e-Privacy Directive has been circumventing the protection of privacy, allowing tech giants like Meta, Google, or Microsoft to automatically scan private messages and images. What was intended as a one-time special regulation now threatened to become a permanent state of affairs.

Political resistance to the provisional arrangement

Even before the vote, it was becoming clear that digital letter secrecy in Europe was at a crossroads. The negotiations on a permanent regulation against abuse material have been stalled for years due to delays in the EU Council. The parliamentary rapporteur Birgit Sippel (S&D) attempted to at least limit the damage. In her draft, the SPD politician unusually sharply criticized the routine of the state of exception. She demanded that particularly error-prone technologies be dispensed with. Specifically, scanning text messages for grooming attempts and the automated evaluation of previously unknown image material using AI should be prohibited.

Majorities were initially found for such restrictions. The representatives wanted to limit the scans to already known content that can be identified via unique digital fingerprints (hashes). However, when it came to the final vote on the overall package, modified in this way, the coalition broke apart.

The reasons for the failure are likely to be varied: For the Left, Green, and Renew groups, the remaining surveillance measures were probably still too invasive. Parts of the conservative EPP, on the other hand, found the restrictions already went too far. The result is a political vacuum that puts the Commission in a difficult position.

Massive criticism of effectiveness and legal basis

The scientific and legal basis of chat control is shaky anyway. A broad alliance of organizations such as the Chaos Computer Club, European Digital Rights (EDRi), and Digitale Gesellschaft recently called for the immediate end of "Chat Control 1.0" in an open letter. It referred, for example, to the sobering figures from reports by the EU Commission itself. The hit rate of the systems is a minuscule 0.000002735 percent, while the error rate is up to 20 percent. This means that countless harmless private recordings are mistakenly flagged by the filters daily and reviewed by human examiners.

The Conference of Independent Data Protection Authorities (DSK) of the federal and state governments also monitored just a few days ago that the upcoming decisions could effectively abolish digital letter secrecy. DSK Chairman Tobias Keber emphasized that child protection is elementary. However, this should not be bought with a digital lock pick that casts millions of blameless citizens under general suspicion.

Uncertainties before the plenary session

However, the issue is not yet off the table. Despite the failure in committee, the European Parliament's plenary session is expected to address the dossier as early as next week. The LIBE decision is considered an official recommendation for the plenary, but further surprises cannot be ruled out in the charged debate. Proponents of chat control in the Commission and the Council of Ministers, who are seeking an extension of the powers until April 2028, will try to close ranks in the plenary. However, should the failure be confirmed there, voluntary chat control would face a swift end.

(vbr)