Denmark kicked off its EU Presidency on July 1, 2025, and, among its first actions, lawmakers swiftly reintroduced the controversial child sexual abuse (CSAM) scanning bill to the top of the agenda.
Having been deemed by critics as Chat Control, the bill aims to introduce new obligations for all messaging services operating in Europe to scan users’ chats, even if they’re encrypted.
The proposal, however, has been failing to attract the needed majority since May 2022, with Poland’s Presidency being the last to give up on such a plan.
Denmark is a strong supporter of Chat Control. Now, the new rules could be adopted as early as October 14, 2025, if the Danish Presidency manages to find a middle ground among the countries’ members.
Crucially, according to the latest data leaked by the former MEP for the German Pirate Party, Patrick Breyer, many countries that said no to Chat Control in 2024 are now undecided, “even though the 2025 plan is even more extreme,” he added.
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As per its first version, all messaging software providers would be required to perform indiscriminate scanning of private messages to look for CSAM – so-called ‘client-side scanning‘. The proposal was met with a strong backlash, and the European Court of Human Rights ended up banning all legal efforts to weaken encryption of secure communications in Europe.
In June 2024, Belgium then proposed a new text to target only shared photos, videos, and URLs, upon users’ permission. This version didn’t satisfy either the industry or voting EU members due to its coercive nature. As per the Belgian text, users must give consent to the shared material being scanned before being encrypted to keep using the functionality.
🇬🇧🚨 Under Danish leadership, #ChatControl is to be adopted as early as October 14! https://t.co/dKVuSlrSJX (p. 31)The decisive factor is Germany: neither Conservatives nor Socialists have yet declared digital privacy of correspondence and secure encryption to be a red line.July 1, 2025
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In the latest of these efforts, on June 24, 2025, the EU Commission published the first step in its ProtectEU strategy, which looked to enable law enforcement bodies to decrypt your private data by 2030.
Source: The EU could be scanning your chats by October 2025 – here’s everything we know | TechRadar
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