What is Chat Control

Chat Control is the name for two bits of legislation which have been considered by the EU (and the European Parliament). One of them has passed and one of them has not. These are called 1.0 and 2.0.

Chat control 1.0

1.0 is a temporary regulation which grants tech companies an exemption to EU privacy rules so they can voluntarily scan private messages for child sexual abuse materials. Note that this is not allowed for encrypted messages. **This has been in force since 2021 but expired last April.

On July 2nd the member states revived the original proposal and forced the bill back to the European Parliament and fast tracked the vote by doing so.

Since the legislation was already adopted once before the criteria for voting it through changed and a simple majority was no longer enough to reject it but an absolute majority (more than half of the actual seated parliament) was needed. The EP failed to gather enough votes.

• Number of seats in parliament: 720
  
• Number of votes required to reject the measure: 360
  
• Number of votes: 314.

Not undemocratic. Not via the back door. A regular vote through an established procedure for a piece of legislation which had already been adopted once before.

1.0 will be in place until 2028.

Again, please note that this is voluntary and is still subject to member state legislation. Companies such as Google, Meta and Microsoft are the only ones that are actively scanning messages at the moment because they have a giant legal department which can deal with suits in that respect.

Chat control 2.0

2.0 is a proposed bill that would make it mandatory to scan messages even if they were encrypted.

This was rejected multiple times and is nowhere near becoming law. This is not on the table and won't be.

Five trilogue rounds have failed to produce a deal. The supposedly final trilogue on 29 June 2026 collapsed over suspicionless scanning; negotiations continue under the Irish presidency.

Source: https://fightchatcontrol.eu/chat-control-overview

Hope this helps explain some things.

Kind regards,

KunKun.