Europe’s biggest platforms can once again scan your messages without a warrant or any reason to suspect you of anything. The European Parliament revived a mass-surveillance regime on Thursday that its own members had already voted down in March, and it passed even with fewer MEPs backing it than opposing it.
The count on the measure known as Chat Control 1.0 came in at 314 against, 276 in favor, and 17 abstentions. More members voted to kill the regulation than to keep it, and it became law regardless, a version of democracy that would surprise most of the people living under it.
Because the European People’s Party forced the proposal back as a second reading, blocking it no longer took a simple majority of the room but an absolute majority of the entire Parliament, 361 of all 720 seats, counted whether a member turned up or not.
That threshold made absence decisive. The vote landed on the final sitting day before summer recess, a date when much of Parliament has historically already left Strasbourg for home, and under an absolute-majority rule every empty seat weighs against the side trying to reach 361. The 314 who showed up to reject the regulation were not outvoted by a larger camp in favor, since only 276 wanted it. They fell 47 votes short of a bar set by the size of the whole chamber rather than the size of the vote.
The contrast with the spring tells the rest of the story. When Parliament last ruled on this in March, defeating the extension needed only a simple majority, and 311 against, 228 in favor, with 92 abstentions, was enough to sink it and let the regime lapse in April. This week a slightly larger bloc, 314, voted the same way and lost. The will of Parliament did not shift between March and July. The procedure and the calendar did and that was enough to overturn the result.
Arithmetic handed the tech industry the outcome it wanted. Warrantless scanning of private communications is legal again across the bloc until 2028. Parliament did attach an exemption for encrypted communications, a gesture that costs nothing given that providers were not scanning encrypted chats anyway. A more substantive attempt failed. A move to restrict scanning to people a court had already flagged as suspects drew even stronger support, 322 to 255, and still collapsed against the same 361-vote wall. What survived was the broadest, most industry-friendly version on offer, one that monitors everyone’s messages by default and asks judicial permission for none of it.
Dr. Patrick Breyer, civil rights activist and former Member of the European Parliament, sent a statement to Reclaim The Net. “The fact that Chat Control is moving forward against the will of the majority of voting MEPs is a farce and damages democracy. Our children are the real losers in this undemocratic process. The passage of a genuine, permanent child protection regulation is now in serious jeopardy. The Council will never agree to a desperately needed paradigm shift as long as they can simply stick to the old approach of suspicionless scanning at the whim of the tech industry.”
He framed the loss as temporary. “Today’s vote on the interim regulation was a setback, but the political battle over the permanent ‘Chat Control 2.0’ is just getting started. The resistance we saw in Parliament today was so strong that finding a majority for permanent, suspicionless mass scanning in future negotiations is a complete pipe dream.”
His objection actually runs deeper than mere procedure. “Trying to protect children with suspicionless mass surveillance is like frantically mopping the floor while the faucet is still running. Blanket chat control is just as unacceptable as indiscriminately opening everyone’s physical mail. For five years, this failed system has served as a smokescreen to delay real action, all while overwhelming the police with false alarms. We need more child protection, not less—but we need effective protection, not the illusion of security.”
The reinstated regime holds until 2028 or until governments and Parliament agree on a permanent replacement, with negotiations set to resume in September. The dispute there turns on a single question that has divided Parliament, the member states, and the Commission for years, which is whether the scanning of private chats should cover everyone or reach only criminal suspects.
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