- The EU Council reached an agreement on the regulation on sexual abuse of children
- Voluntary chat scanning remains in bill despite privacy backlash
- The Council is now preparing to start negotiations with Parliament
The EU Council has finally reached agreement on the controversial Child Sexual Abuse Regulation (CSAR) after more than three years of failed attempts.
Dubbed Chat Control by its critics, the agreement has kept cryptographers, technologists, encrypted service providers and privacy experts alike on edge since its inception.
Presidency after presidency, the bill has taken many forms. But its most controversial feature is an obligation for all messaging service providers operating in the EU – including those using end-to-end encryption – to scan their users’ private chats for child sexual abuse (CSAM) material.
At the beginning of the month, the Danish presidency decided to change its approach with a new compromise text that instead makes chat scanning voluntary. It turned out to be a winning move, as the proposal managed to reach agreement in the Council on Wednesday 26 November 2025.
However, privacy experts are unlikely to celebrate. The decision came days after a group of scientists wrote another open letter warning that the latest text still “poses high risks to society.” That’s after other privacy experts deemed the new proposal a “political deception” rather than a real solution.
The EU Council is now preparing to start negotiations with the European Parliament in the hope of agreeing on the regulation’s final terms.
What we know about the council agreement
According to the EU Council’s announcement, the new law imposes a number of obligations on digital companies. Under the new rules, online service providers will be required to assess how their platforms can be misused and, based on the findings, may have to “implement mitigation measures to address this risk,” the Council notes.
The Council also introduces three risk categories of online services. Those deemed high risk may be forced “to contribute to the development of technologies to reduce the risks associated with their services.” Voluntary scanning also remains in the bill.
A new EU agency will then be tasked with overseeing the implementation of the new rules.
“I am pleased that the member states have finally agreed on a way forward that includes a number of obligations for providers of communication services to combat the spread of material about the sexual abuse of children,” says Minister of Justice Peter Hummelgaard.
But concerns about how the deal threatens our digital rights remain, with one person on the forum, Hacker News, saying that the Danish “government today has turned the EU into a tool for total surveillance, I don’t know if there can be any return from that.”
As the trilogue negotiations approach, the ongoing challenge for lawmakers remains to strike the right balance between stopping online abuse without compromising fundamental rights and strong encryption.
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