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EU "Chat Control" Trilogue Resumes With Scanning Off the Table and Age Checks Back On

· Antoine H.

Brussels skyline with EU flags at dusk

Table of Contents

What just happened

Trilogue negotiations on the EU Child Sexual Abuse Regulation (CSAR), commonly called “Chat Control,” resumed on May 4, 2026 under the Danish Council presidency, with the next round scheduled for May 11, 2026. The talks follow the April 3 expiry of the temporary voluntary scanning derogation, which the European Parliament refused to extend by a vote of 311 to 228.

What is in the current draft

The Council text no longer contains an explicit obligation to break or bypass end-to-end encryption through mandatory client-side scanning. Instead, providers face risk assessment and mitigation duties. The same draft introduces mandatory age verification across messaging apps, email services, and app stores. Critics including Patrick Breyer and Tuta argue this preserves a regulatory path to broad scanning under a “voluntary” label, and removes anonymous communication for adults.

Why it matters for browser tools

The shift in the debate is structural. Policymakers and platforms are converging on the view that privacy guarantees built into the architecture, such as processing inside the browser or on the device, are more durable than guarantees built into policy. Tools that never transmit user files to a server cannot be compelled to scan them at rest, and they sit outside the scope of any future detection order targeting transmitted content. The same logic applies to PDF redaction, image EXIF stripping, and text conversion. If the file never leaves the device, the legal surface narrows.

What to watch next

The Danish presidency is pushing for a political agreement before its term ends on June 30, 2026, with a final compromise targeted between June and July. The Parliament’s position, set in November 2023, still rejects general client-side scanning, so the trilogue endgame will hinge on whether age verification, app store gating, and “voluntary” detection survive the final text.

Sources

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