The European Parliament voted on July 9 to revive a temporary law allowing online platforms to voluntarily scan private messages for child sexual abuse material (CSAM) until April 2028. While 314 members voted to block the extension, lawmakers successfully amended the text to exempt end-to-end encrypted services.

Chat Control 1.0, as the measure is widely known, is a derogation from EU ePrivacy rules, the legal framework governing electronic communications privacy, that permits companies including Meta and Google to voluntarily detect and report known CSAM in unencrypted messages.

The Parliament adopted amendments that same day to explicitly exclude end-to-end encrypted communications from the law’s scope.

The result turned on a procedural threshold. At the second reading stage, an absolute majority of 361 members of the European Parliament (MEPs) was required to reject the Council’s position. A simple majority of 314 MEPs voted to scrap the law, with 276 voting to keep it and 17 abstaining, but the 361-vote threshold was not met, allowing the measure to advance.

The vote followed a contested procedural move. On July 7, MEPs approved 331 to 304 to place Chat Control 1.0 back on the plenary agenda through an urgency procedure, two days before the chamber’s summer recess.

Pirate Party MEP Markéta Gregorová, the Greens/EFA lead negotiator on the file, said the urgency vote “violates our own rules of procedure.” The Greens/EFA group stated that Parliament President Roberta Metsola, the European People’s Party, the Council, and the Commission coordinated to restore the text to the agenda.

Thursday’s outcome marked the third time a majority of MEPs voted against Chat Control. The ePrivacy derogation was first introduced in August 2021 as a stopgap pending permanent CSAM legislation and expired on April 3, 2026, after Parliament previously rejected extension proposals.

Negotiations on a permanent framework remain ongoing.