The European Parliament approved the reinstatement of the so-called “chat control.” On Thursday, the necessary absolute majority was not reached to reject the corresponding exemption regulation. Following the parliamentary procedure, the Parliament had cleared the way for a short-term vote on Tuesday, which allowed President Roberta Metsola, at the behest of member states and the EPP faction, to place the urgent motion on the agenda. This enabled the Parliament to vote again on the controversial proposal during its final session before the summer break.
The goal of this move was to reactivate the transitional regulation regarding chat control that had expired in April. This exemption regulation allowed tech giants such as Google, Meta, and Microsoft to voluntarily screen private chats, emails, and messenger traffic for material concerning child sexual abuse, and to do so without requiring a specific suspicion of a crime. While the Parliament had not agreed to a renewal previously, causing the rule to lapse in April, IT security researchers had frequently warned in open letters about the unacceptably high error rates of the AI scans used, which risked compromising the privacy of innocent citizens.
