EPP revives EU 'chat control' bill; WhatsApp, Signal exempt

The European Parliament has revived a bill it had already rejected in March that lets online platforms voluntarily scan private messages for child sexual abuse material, Politico reported, with the centre-right European People's Party driving the push to bring the file back for another vote before the summer recess.

According to reporting from Euronews, EPP chief Manfred Weber and four European commissioners leaned on lawmakers to reopen the derogation that gives platforms legal cover to scan for abuse material, a window that had closed after the 26 March 2026 rejection. Greens/EFA MEP Markéta Gregorová, the file's negotiator, told the outlet the revival meant lawmakers were 'forced into a second vote that questions the essence of democracy' and warned that using an urgent procedure to bring it back 'violates our own rules of procedure'.

What survived on 9 July 2026 is the temporary derogation, sometimes labelled 'Chat Control 1.0', not the far more contentious permanent 'Chat Control' regulation that is still stuck in negotiations. Opponents fell short of the 361 votes needed to kill it under second-reading rules, with the final tally at 314 against, 276 in favour and 17 abstaining. Crucially, an amendment was attached that exempts end-to-end encrypted services such as WhatsApp and Signal from the scanning rules, meaning the client-side scanning fight is deferred rather than resolved.

The honest caveat is that the reporting I've seen does not spell out how narrow or broad the encryption exemption is in practice, or how it handles hybrid apps that mix encrypted and unencrypted surfaces, cloud backups and metadata. It also doesn't detail exactly which four commissioners intervened, or how the urgent-procedure move squares with parliament's own rules, which is the ground Gregorová is now contesting.

For anyone building consumer messaging or moderation tooling in Europe, the near-term signal is that the pure E2EE stack has bought itself another cycle of political protection, and the interesting regulatory pressure has moved to hybrid apps, cloud-backed chats and every surface that sits outside the exemption's line.