a regulation against child crime divides the Twenty-Seven

5 mins

Discussions on the controversial regulation on child protection scheduled for Thursday June 20 are postponed, the Belgian presidency of the Council of the European Union having reached the conclusion that the qualified majority required for this text would not be reached. However, consultations continue between member states, RFI learned this Thursday.

Presented in May 2022 by the European Commission, the proposed regulation aims to counter the proliferation of images and videos of sexual abuse of children, and the solicitation of children by child criminals, by requiring platforms and messaging services to line to detect and then report such content.

“ Scanning people’s messages as the EU proposes breaks encryption. It’s surveillance and it’s a dangerous path to take », warns the CEO of Meta and WhatsAppWill Cathcart, on X.

A post in the wake of that of the CEO of Signal messaging, Meredith Whittaker, who considers that “ break end-to-end encryption […] is a disastrous proposition “.

Infringement ” disproportionate » respect for private life

European data protection authorities, MEPs and certain Member States includingGermanybelieve that this proposal constitutes an infringement “ disproportionate » to respect for private life and are concerned about the end of the confidentiality of correspondence, since encrypted messaging (Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp, etc.) would also be affected.

Reluctance also concerns possible errors linked to the use of artificial intelligence to detect child criminal content. Currently, the detection of this content by platforms is done on a voluntary basis, which is largely insufficient given the scale of the problem, underlines the EU. The current regime runs until April 2026, pending the adoption of the new regulation which would make this detection a legal obligation for everyone.

The proposed regulation also requires communication service providers to take preventive measures to avoid the dissemination of photos or videos of a pedophile nature. When there is a significant risk that a service will be used improperly, a judicial authority or independent administrative authority could issue a detection injunction, indicates Agence France-Presse.

The project also provides that this illegal content, once spotted, will have to be reported to a new European Center for the Prevention and Combating of Child Sexual Abuse, which will carry out a verification and send it to the competent police authorities and to Europol .

In November 2023, the European Parliament amended the Commission’s proposal to limit the scope of these surveillance injunctions to users suspected of such actions, and excluding end-to-end encrypted communications from these detection obligations.

“A priority file for our presidency”

“ Combating online sexual abuse of children is a priority for our presidency », indicated the Belgian Minister of the Interior, Annelies Verlinden, at a press conference on June 13 after a meeting of the Council of the European Union in Luxembourg.

There Belgium, who holds the six-monthly presidency of the Council of the EU until the end of June, presented a compromise. It provides for measures to try to respond to the concerns expressed, in particular by further limiting the scope of the text. Belgium also called on States to “ move forward on this issue “. Because it is now up to the Member States to decide on the text.

The position of the France, which has not yet been decided, could tip the scales, according to diplomatic sources. At the beginning of June, several child protection associations – Ecpat France, BeBrave, the Children’s Foundation, Cameleon, Point de Contact, Elien Rebirth and Friends of Romy – called on Paris to support this regulation.

During the meeting of Interior Ministers on June 13, France’s permanent representative to the EU, Philippe Léglise-Costa, welcomed the guarantees provided in the compromise, which make it possible to “ reinforce the proportionality of the detection system “. He assured that France was “ very determined to reach an agreement […] to fight against this abominable scourge » and that she would be ready to support the text with “ additional adjustments » to ensure that the “device will not weaken encryption “.

There Hungary, who will occupy the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU from July 1, will be responsible for resuming this work in order to arrive at a common position of the Member States on the text. The next step will be the start of talks with the European Parliament to finalize the regulation.

Associations in favor of this regulation

According to a report published by the Commission in December 2023, Meta detected in 2022 on Messenger and Instagram messaging more than 6.6 million images or videos relating to sexual abuse of children involving a user in the EU, and X (formerly Twitter) closed 2.3 million user accounts in connection with the sexual exploitation of children.

The Commission emphasizes that online detections help identify thousands of child victims of such abuse in the EU, and lead to convictions of the perpetrators of this behavior.

According to data from the United States Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), more than 100 million photos and videos involving child sexual abuse were reported in 2023, an increase of almost 20% compared to the last year.