Vote called off

EU member states fail to find majority for chat control

The law would have obliged messengers such as WhatsApp to scan the photos and videos sent by users and thus undermine encryption.

(Bild: flickr.com/Jan Persiel)

The EU law dubbed "chat control" by critics has still not been approved by the Council of EU member states. A vote among the 27 EU ambassadors on a new compromise proposal was taken off the agenda at short notice on Thursday.

The necessary qualified majority was not achieved, the news agency APA learned from EU Council circles. EU heavyweight Germany, among others, had previously opposed the proposal. According to reports, Austria also spoke out against it.

The official aim of the planned law is to curb the spread of depictions of child abuse. Critics complain that this would force providers of messenger services such as Whatsapp, Telegram or Signal to use software to scan private encrypted chat messages for such images. This would make secure end-to-end encryption impossible.

The project is not yet off the table
However, the Belgian Council Presidency wants to continue working on a common position of the EU countries in order to then negotiate the final legislative text with the EU Parliament, according to Council Presidency circles. In addition to Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic and Poland have also spoken out against the proposal in its current form, according to Der Standard.

The latest compromise proposal apparently stipulates that the surveillance obligation should only apply to images and videos. However, opponents of the proposal do not see any real improvement here either. German FDP politician Christian Dürr, for example, criticized the news agency dpa: "The alleged option of being able to refuse surveillance on your own device is not really an option, but a compulsion. Because if you refuse, you are no longer allowed to send pictures and videos."

MPs warn against "climate of general suspicion"
In Austria, members of the National Council from the Greens, NEOS and SPÖ also spoke out against "chat control". In a letter co-initiated by Green Party member of parliament Süleyman Zorba, they warn of a "climate of general suspicion" and damage to the EU's image as a "guarantor of freedom". The letter was also signed by Georg Bürstmayr from the Greens, Nikolaus Scherak from the NEOS and Katharina Kucharowits from the SPÖ. Politicians from Germany, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic were also among the signatories.

The Neos youth organization JUNOS called on State Secretary for Digitalization Claudia Plakolm and Interior Minister Gerhard Karner (both ÖVP) to take a clearer stance against the planned chat control. According to a leaked paper, Karner's department had previously spoken out in favor of expanding the monitoring options in an expert group. Karner is also campaigning at a national level for changes to the law that would enable messenger monitoring.