In today’s vote on a derogation from ePrivacy rules for the purpose of detecting child sexual abuse online, MEPs adopted amendments to the Council position.
They want to exclude “communications to which end-to-end encryption is, has been or will be applied” from the scope of the law.
At this stage in the process (EP second reading), an absolute majority of MEPs - currently 360 – was needed to reject or amend the Council position. In an initial vote, a simple majority supported rejecting the position (314 in favour, 276 against, 17 abstentions). As there was no majority in favour of rejecting the amended EP position (276 in favour, 286 against, 30 abstentions), the second reading is closed.
The EP position (text as amended) will now be sent to the Council, which has three months to approve or reject the amendments. If the Council does not accept all of the amendments, EP and Council will move to conciliation to agree on the law.
The Council position would effectively have brought back a lapsed derogation allowing providers to voluntarily detect child sexual abuse (CSA) and solicitation of children in private communications on their services and remove and report relevant material.
