The European Commission presented its proposal for the fight against child sexual abuse on May 11, 2022. This proposal aims to curb the distribution of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and online grooming. The European Parliament adopted a report in November 2023 that proposed limiting detection in encrypted communications to metadata and strengthening prevention measures for the protection of children. It further supported the establishment of the EU Centre to Prevent and Combat Child Sexual Abuse (EUCSA) in line with recent rulings of the European Court of Justice.
In the Council, discussions have continued without agreement on a common position. Neither the Belgian nor the Hungarian Presidencies achieved consensus by the end of their mandates in 2024. The Polish Presidency likewise did not reach a position. To avoid a regulatory gap, the Council and Parliament reached a provisional agreement in February 2024 to extend the interim regulation granting a temporary derogation from certain provisions of the ePrivacy Directive for voluntary detection of CSAM until 3 April 2026. The derogation enables streaming and video platforms to voluntarily detect, report, and remove CSAM.
Now the Danish Presidency has re-emerged the proposal with a new draft of the legislation, which departs from previous suggestions to make chat control voluntary and to exclude encrypted communications, and instead puts forward a broad, mandatory chat control regime. While the Polish Council Presidency had proposed making chat control voluntary and excluding encrypted communications, the Danish proposal rejects this and instead advocats for a comprehensive, mandatory chat control regime.
Bitkom strongly supports the objectives of the proposal guaranteeing the wellbeing and protection of children, both offline and online, and is in favour of the amendments of the Danish proposal aiming to add further safeguards to protect cybersecurity and to ensure proportionality and respect for fundamental rights.
You can download Bitkom’s detailed statement and position on the current initiative here.
