“As a parent, lawmaker and European, I find today‘s vote in the European Parliament hard to understand,” Home affairs Commissioner Magnus Brunner told POLITICO after the vote. The decision will leave “countless victims without visibility or protection,” he said, noting that Europe hosts the most child sexual abuse material in the world.
A total of 311 lawmakers rejected the European Commission’s proposal to extend the law, with 228 voting in favor and 92 abstaining.
The vote followed weeks of clashes, as national governments pushed Parliament to drop its privacy objections in order to secure a swift deal to extend the scanning rules. Negotiators for the Parliament, Council of the EU and Commission this month failed twice to reach a political deal.
The center-right European People’s Party (EPP) mounted a last-ditch attempt to keep the scanning rules alive by filing an amendment to Thursday’s vote that would have aligned Parliament’s position with that of capitals. But lawmakers voted against the EPP’s suggested fix, deepening the rift between privacy proponents and child rights defenders.
Leaders of Parliament’s political groups got a letter from four European commissioners on Wednesday, urging them to solve the issue and allow their members to break ranks in the crucial vote, POLITICO first reported. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, speaking in the country’s Parliament on Wednesday, also called for the law to be extended.
Large platforms Meta (which owns WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram), TikTok, Snapchat, Google, Microsoft and LinkedIn (owned by Microsoft) said in a joint statement last week that the EU’s inability to reach a deal was “irresponsible.”