A majority said no. It passed anyway.
European Parliament, Thursday 9 July 2026. Motion to reject the Council's position on Chat Control 1.0.
Because this was a second reading, the motion needed an absolute majority of all 720 MEPs — not a majority of those voting. Hover or tap anything below to read the exact figures.
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How it got there
Negotiations between Parliament and Council collapse over encryption safeguards. The interim derogation is left to lapse — the outcome campaigners had spent four years asking for.
For three months, voluntary scanning of private messages has no special exemption from EU privacy law. Reporting of abuse material continues under other legal bases.
Parliament's President sends the matter back to the Council, warning of a gap in child protection. An expired regulation cannot be extended, so the Council tables a new instrument with identical content and requests an expedited procedure.
With 11 abstentions. Skipping the responsible committee removes scrutiny and turns the plenary decision into a vote to deny — the mechanism that decided everything four days later.
314 for rejection, 276 against, 17 abstentions, 361 required. The Council's position stands: suspicionless scanning is lawful again until 3 April 2028, and the timetable for the permanent regulation is set.
The permanent regulation is decided by arithmetic in the Council, where a handful of undecided member states hold the balance. Nothing about that is settled.
47 votes. That is the entire distance between the law we have and the law a majority of MEPs asked for.
Most of those 47 are absences and abstentions — which is to say, attention.