Combating child sexual abuse online: support for more limited ePrivacy derogation 

This article is brought to you in association with the European Parliament.

On Thursday, Parliament adopted amendments to a privacy exemption allowing electronic communication services to voluntarily detect child sexual abuse.

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.

Background and next steps

After the Commission proposed another extension to the derogation, MEPs voted to limit the scope of the detection measures and to require judicial approval. They then started negotiations with the Council, but no agreement was reached. On 26 March Parliament rejected the Commission proposal to extend the derogation and closed its first reading, leading to the expiry of the interim law on 3 April 2026. Subsequently, the Council decided to send the proposal back to Parliament for a second reading.

The derogation is meant to be a temporary measure to prevent a legal vacuum while talks on a permanent regime to combat child sexual abuse online are ongoing. Most aspects of the permanent law were agreed under the Cyprus Presidency of the Council in the first half of 2026, leaving certain aspects still to be discussed.

In parallel, MEPs and the Council have also agreed on updating a directive to combat child sexual abuse.