EU Parliament Votes to Advance Controversial Child Abuse Material Scanning Law

STRASBOURG — A high-stakes face-off in Strasbourg on Thursday edges the European Union one step closer to resurrecting a once-dead child sexual abuse law.

The European Parliament voted to send a bill giving tech companies the legal right to scan for child sexual abuse material to EU member countries for approval. The surprise twist comes just months after the European Parliament rejected the bill in March, and follows a push by the center-right European People’s Party, which prompted EU capitals to restart negotiations on the once-dead law.

The fight against online child abuse material has heated up European politics for months, and has gotten everyone from German Chancellor Friedrich Merz to tech mogul and X owner Elon Musk to speak up. Child rights groups say the EU bill is critical to protect children from pedophiles and predators. Critics say it comes with serious privacy and surveillance risks.

In the latest headache for legislators, lawmakers on Thursday added an amendment to the controversial piece of legislation that would exempt end-to-end encrypted services like WhatsApp and Signal from the scanning rules.

In the end, both camps came out disappointed.

German lawmaker Lena Düpont, the center-right group’s home affairs spokesperson, said the group wanted a “clear cut” return of the law with no amendments. “We're not satisfied with the results of today,” she said.

Irena Joveva, a Slovenian liberal lawmaker who voted against the scanning regime as a whole and was behind one of the successful amendments, said “I remain deeply disappointed that the Council, with the backing of one political group, managed to force this vote upon us."

Tech firms, which are continuing to scan despite the legal gap, face more uncertainty and delays, they said. "We hoped for approval today," said Ben Brake, director general of tech lobby group DOT Europe. "Adopting amendments — even if they're well-intentioned — is delaying the process."

And children remain unprotected, argued Nathalie Meurens, spokesperson for ECLAG, a coalition of child rights groups. “Today’s vote was about closing a critical legal gap that continues to put children at risk," she said.

The bill up for a vote on Thursday is a temporary fix to allow tech firms to scan for child sexual abuse. Legislators are still negotiating a permanent legal solution — which is itself a hugely controversial file.

Chaos in the chamber

The odds on Thursday were stacked in favor of passing the law. When the Council brought it back to life earlier this month, it did so by following a procedure that is technically the official EU lawmaking process but in reality is almost never used, and makes it easier to pass a bill than to kill it.

On Thursday, the Parliament's plenary chamber was unusually raucous and chaotic, and members were audibly confused about the procedure. Many were furious that they had to vote at all. One member approached the stand of Vice President Sophie Wilmès to say: “We don’t know what we’re voting on.”

Opponents of the bill in the end didn't reach the threshold of 361 votes to stop it entirely, with only 314 voting against it, 276 in favor and 17 abstaining.

The result was heavily carried by center-right votes of the European People's Party, with liberal and social-democrat groups split and all others voting mostly against the proposal.

Top conservative figures including EPP chief Manfred Weber and four European Commissioners — two of them conservative — pressured lawmakers in the days ahead of the vote.

Opponents lamented that the timing of the vote didn't help either: “Forcing a session on the final day of July makes securing an absolute majority incredibly difficult,” Joveva said. “This sets a troubling precedent for the Parliament.”

Where privacy-minded lawmakers did succeed is in adding an amendment to the bill on one of the most sensitive topics of all: end-to-end encryption, a technology used by WhatsApp, Signal and others to protect messages from snooping. National governments in the EU Council will now have to decide whether to accept that change.

Markéta Gregorová, a Czech lawmaker with the Greens group and a vocal privacy advocate, told POLITICO it was "a bittersweet victory."

“We now expect the Council to uphold that safeguard [on encryption],” said António Tânger Corrêa, a Portuguese lawmaker with the far-right Patriots group, who introduced an amendment on end-to-end encryption that also passed.

If Council refuses, the EU will be plunged back into institutional deadlock: The bill would then go to a dreaded “conciliation” procedure, which was used only once since 2013.

A European Commission spokesperson said it’s for the Council to review the amendments but added that it will conduct an “assessment” of the proposed changes. “Ultimately, we must find a way to protect our children against sexual abuse online. And we need to do so quickly," they said.