Germany Under Pressure to Oppose EU Chat Control Proposal

Signal and Rights Groups Urge Berlin to Reject CSAM Proposal Ahead of Key EU Vote

Akshaya Asokan (asokan_akshaya) •
October 7, 2025    

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The EU Justice and Home Affairs Council is set to vote Oct. 14 on a regulation called Chat Control that’s meant to combat child sexual abuse material online. Germany is seen as pivotal to the measure’s future, which has provoked stiff resistance from security and privacy advocates since its introduction by the European Commission in 2022 (see: European CSAM Scanning Proposal Runs Into Opposition).

Germany’s Federal Ministry of Justice on Tuesday will decide the country’s position on the proposal. Previous anti-CSAM measures requiring surveillance of encrypted communications proposals put forward by Belgium and Hungary failed to gain momentum due to lack of consensus among member states (see: European CSAM Scanning Proposal Runs Into Opposition).

>”Any decision to favor the proposal would be a frontal attack on our digital security,” said German digital rights activist Patrick Breyer and a former member of the European Parliament. “We are on the verge of a surveillance regime that does not exist anywhere else in the free world,” he added.

The latest proposal, introduced by the Danish EU presidency in July, would allow law enforcement agencies to issue detection orders requiring end-to-end encrypted services such as Signal to carry out mass scanning of private communications for CSAM.

Danish officials have said the trading bloc is “running out of viable options” to curb dissemination of CSAM content and to ensure online security of children. The proposal from the country limits the scope of the detection order to videos and URLS, and excludes audio and text communications as means to safeguard privacy.

Signal President Meredith Whittaker warned in an open letter to the German authorities that scanning messages “either before or after encryption negates the very premise of end-to-end encryption.” “Instead of having to break encryption protocols, hackers and hostile states would only need to piggyback on the access granted to these scanning systems,” Whittaker added.

Germany should “hold the line,” on the proposal Whittaker said, adding the decision could determine “whether the human right to private communication continues to exist in Europe.” Other end-to-end encrypted platforms including WhatsApp and Threema have also reportedly raised similar concerns.

As of Tuesday, a petition launched by German rights groups opposing Chat Control received over 120,000 votes. Earlier, the German Federal Office for Information Security said that any attempt to break end-to-end encryption would pose a high risk by increasing attack surfaces.

As of late Tuesday, it is unclear what Germany’s Federal Ministry of Justice has decided. The agency did not respond to a request for comment.

More than 700 privacy and technology experts warned that narrowing the scope of CSAM scanning “does not eliminate the serious concerns” surrounding privacy and security. They also cautioned that using AI-based detection tools risks false positives, given the current error-prone models.

If Germany supports the latest CSAM proposal, the regulation would advance to final trilogue negotiations between the Council, Parliament and Commission. Austria, the Netherlands, Poland and Slovenia are among EU nations that rejected the proposal. Nations backing Chat Control include France and Ireland.