EU deadlock over child pornography: Sippel attacks the Council.

Brussels – The option to voluntarily identify child sexual abuse material online will end on 3 April. Talks between the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union on a temporary extension of the current derogation from the e-Privacy Regulation—which allows for the voluntary online identification of child sexual abuse material in derogation from certain privacy protection rules—have come to nothing. “Voluntary scanning by providers to combat the spread of child sexual abuse material online will no longer be possible“, thundered Birgit Sippel, MEP for the Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D). And “it is a shame that last night the Parliament and the Council failed to reach an agreement on the extension of the provisional regulation, despite our willingness to negotiate constructively,” she pointed out, criticising the “lack of flexibility” on the part of Member States.

More specifically, MEPs felt that “it was essential that child sexual abuse material that had already been identified or reported remained accessible and usable by law enforcement agencies.” However, “as regards previously unknown material and the phenomenon of online grooming, the Commission’s reports on the implementation of the measures do not provide clear evidence of their effectiveness; Parliament has therefore called for a more targeted approach,” she added.

Regulation 1307 of 2024 concerns the fight against online sexual abuse of children and amends the previous regulation, dating from 2021, on a temporary derogation from certain provisions regarding the use of technologies by communications service providers. In effect, it allowed communications service providers to use certain technologies to identify and report child abuse, by way of derogation from the Directive (2002/58/EC) on data privacy. This derogation was defined by the 2024 Regulation as an “exceptional nature” measure, precisely to avoid setting a precedent, with the expiry date set at 3 April 2026. However, the “long-term legal framework” proposed by the Commission in 2022 has not yet been approved, creating a race against time. The Parliament had been ready to negotiate the permanent regulatory framework since November 2023, and
since the Council adopted its position in November 2025, negotiations on the permanent legislation have been ongoing.

The difference between the two institutions’ positions lies in the balance between child safety and the protection of users’ privacy, with differing approaches to the scope of monitoring and the protection of communications.
The European Parliament’s plenary session approved on 11 March the proposal by the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) to extend the derogation until 3 August 2027, so as to allow more time to reach an agreement on the long-term legal framework to prevent and combat online sexual abuse of children, and reiterated its preference for a a targeted and proportionate measures approach.
Trilogues—that is, meetings between EU institutions to finalise the text—are currently underway. As stated in its agreed position of November 2023, the European Parliament believes that the technology used for the voluntary detection of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) should apply only to material already identified as such or reported as potential CSAM by a user, a trusted flagger or an organisation. Furthermore, the measures should be targeted at specific users or groups of users identified by a judicial authority as reasonably suspected of being linked to CSAM. This is because the European Parliament’s priority is to guarantee the general privacy of all users and to avoid mass surveillance. The Council,in its position adopted in November 2025, proposes to make the voluntary screening of messages by companies a permanent measure, with an obligation to prevent such offences by applying risk categories (high, medium, low) to services. “The relevant national authorities—as stated in the press release—will have the power to compel companies to remove content and block access to it or, in the case of search engines, to remove search results from the list,” with penalties for non-compliant companies. Both institutions also agree on the creation of an EU Centre for Child Protection tasked with supporting service providers and national authorities in identifying and reporting child sexual abuse material online and in enforcing sanctions.
Work on permanent and more comprehensive rules to combat the sexual abuse of children online is therefore underway. And the co-legislators hope to reach an agreement by the end of June, when the current Cypriot Presidency of the Council of the EU concludes. Despite the suspension of the voluntary self-reporting scheme after 3 April, Sippel is looking ahead, emphasising that the fight against child sexual abuse material must now shift to other fronts: “With the expiry of the provisional regulation, the priority now is to raise public awareness, strengthen law enforcement agencies and their capacity to combat the dissemination of child sexual abuse material online in a proportionate manner, and remind service providers of their responsibilities and the need to cooperate with civil society and law enforcement agencies.”

English version by the Translation Service of Withub