EU Parliament revives Chat Control 1.0 by 331-304 urgency vote

The vote followed a last-minute agenda insertion by President Metsola at member-state and EPP request. It bypasses the prior rejection of extension in March and April, returning the file to plenary on the final pre-recess day. Under second-reading rules an absolute majority of 361 is required to amend or reject while a simple majority suffices to confirm, giving proponents a structural edge as attendance drops. Meta, Google and Microsoft had continued voluntary detections after April expiry but without legal cover.

Error-rate data from prior deployments show false-positive rates between 0.001 % and 0.01 % on billions of messages, translating to thousands of erroneous flags per month according to internal platform disclosures cited in EDPS opinions. Researchers documented systematic over-blocking of encrypted images and inability to distinguish consensual adult content from prohibited material. The 2021-2023 transitional period produced 1.3 million reports to NCMEC yet yielded conviction rates below 10 % in several member states, indicating limited investigative follow-through.

The maneuver connects to the stalled 2022 CSAM proposal that would mandate client-side scanning and weaken end-to-end encryption. It also prefigures enforcement patterns under the Digital Services Act risk-assessment chapters. Civil-liberties groups note the vote occurred without updated impact assessments on privacy or security, a gap the original Heise coverage does not quantify.

On 11 July Parliament is expected to confirm the transitional extension by simple majority. Council trilogue negotiations on the permanent file are scheduled to resume in September with the reinstated scanning authority used as negotiating leverage.