- Poland’s EU Presidency also failed to find a majority on the disputed sexual abuse of children (CSAM).
- The European Commission first revealed the so-called proposal for chat checks in May 2022
- In February, Poland suggested a new version to make scanning of encrypted chats volunteer
Poland has also failed in its attempt to find an agreement on the controversial sexual abuse of children (CSAM).
As reported by Digital Rights Group Netzpolitik, the Polish Presidency is the latest EU council that gives up after being able to secure the necessary majority among EU members. The bill seeks to require all message services in Europe to scan users’ chats, even if they are encrypted.
That said what has been considered by critics, as chat control may not be away from the table yet. On July 1, 2025, Denmark will take responsibility for the EU Presidency until December. A strong supporter of chat control, experts on Netx policy, expects Denmark to push further with the proposal.
“No deal could be reached” – again
“No agreement could be reached during the meeting,” reads the summary (as published by Netx policy) of the last meeting held by the Polish Presidency on the case on May 23, 2025.
The EU Commission first revealed the proposal in May 2022 as a solution to the spread of CSAM content. Since then, the proposal has seen many turns, but both experts and politicians have warned against privacy and security risks by undermining encrypted communication.
According to its first version, all messaging software providers, regardless of whether they use encryption, would have been required to perform arbitrary scanning of private messages looking for CSAM-so-called ‘client page scan’.
Backlash among the industry and even among the EU’s political benches – the European Human Rights Court prohibited all legal efforts to weaken the encryption of secure communication in Europe by the beginning of 2024, in fact – brought legislators to adjust the wording. Last June, Belgium then suggested a new text to target only shared photos, videos and URLs under users’ permission.
Did you know?
Encryption is a technology that WhatsApp, Signal, ProtonMail and even the best VPN apps use to crawl users’ messages into an ulcerous form to prevent unauthorized access. In short, end-to-end encryption guarantees that our chats will remain private.
This version did not satisfy the industry or voted EU members because of its compulsory nature. According to the Belgian text, users must give consent to the shared material that is scanned before being encrypted to continue using the functionality.
Frice until February 2025, Poland tried to find a better compromise by making the scan of encrypted chat’s volunteers instead of mandatory and classified as “prevention.”
While experts found this version a “major progress” they still complained to the risk of mass surveillance.
Throughout the presidency, the EU members could not agree on a satisfactory wording despite several attempts to change the compromise text.
As reported by netz policy, during the last meeting, many EU membership representatives expressed their concerns. These even included countries that previously joined the list of favorite, such as Italy, Romania and France. The latter even said, “it doesn’t make sense to continue working with this text at all.”
As mentioned earlier, Denmark is expected to continue to find an agreement on the CSAM scan proposal after starting its presidency in July.
This is coming as the EU Commission is also ready to start its study of legal encryption back door under a new controversial plan, Protecteu. Despite being in his infant, the strategy has already attracted strong criticism throughout the industry.
