On 9 July, the motion to reject the reinstatement of voluntary scanning of communications fell short at 276 votes, against the 360 required at second reading. The regime returns in force until 3 April 2028.
On 9 July the European Parliament, meeting in plenary in Strasbourg, failed to reach the absolute majority needed to reject the Council position reinstating the regulation known as Chat Control: the rejection motion fell at 276 votes in favour, with 314 against and 17 abstentions, out of the 360 required. The voluntary scanning regime for private communications, adopted by the Council on 2 July, thus returns in force until 3 April 2028.
The text reinstates the derogation from ePrivacy rules that allows messaging and email service providers to voluntarily scan users’ communications for child sexual abuse material, within the framework of measures to protect minors online. The derogation had expired on 3 April, after the chamber in March had rejected an extension by 311 votes against; by reintroducing the same text as its own position at first reading, the Council reopened the file at second reading, where the numbers favour the governments.
At second reading, rejecting or amending the Council position requires an absolute majority of members: 360 votes out of the current 719. Absences effectively count in favour of the text, and more than a hundred MEPs did not take part in the vote. On Tuesday 7 July the chamber had approved with 331 votes in favour and 304 against the urgency procedure requested by the European People’s Party, which brought the vote into the last session before the summer recess.
The amendment limiting scanning to suspects identified by a judicial authority also fell below the threshold, stopping at 322 votes in favour against 255. The amendment that explicitly exempts end-to-end encrypted communications did pass, with 369 votes – a protection critics describe as symbolic, since that content remains unreadable by providers in any case.
“The fact that Chat Control advances against the will of the majority of voting MEPs is a farce and harms democracy,” wrote Patrick Breyer, former MEP for the Pirate Party and a longstanding critic of the file, after the vote. According to Breyer, the reinstatement removes any incentive for governments to conclude negotiations on the permanent regulation – known as Chat Control 2.0 and more invasive still because it would no longer be voluntary – targeting child abuse, which resumes in September: as long as voluntary mass scanning remains legal, he argues, the targeted framework that emerged from the Parliament can be postponed indefinitely.
Adopted in 2021 as a three-year bridging measure and extended once in 2024, the temporary regime now reaches its seventh year in existence, with only the three-month gap without a legal basis between April and July 2026. The 3 April 2028 deadline is designed to cover negotiations on the permanent regulation; without an agreement, the Union will reach that date with voluntary scanning still in place.
