Metsola Forces Second EU Parliament Vote on Child Abuse Scanning Bill

Full text

BRUSSELS — When the European Parliament voted down a law allowing tech companies to scan their platforms for child sexual abuse material over privacy concerns, the chamber’s president, Roberta Metsola, didn’t like the result.

Now she’s asking lawmakers to vote again .

By deploying a rarely used procedure — in effect asking EU national governments to send Parliament the same bill a second time — Metsola has forced the legislation back onto the chamber’s agenda at its plenary meeting in Strasbourg in coming days.

It will now face a new vote under rules that make it more likely to pass.

The bill to fight child sexual abuse material (CSAM) online would allow tech companies to legally scan their services for the content. Police, investigators and child rights activists say the bill is critical to stop pedophiles from spreading the illegal content online, but privacy groups, cyber experts and tech officials have warned the rules enable mass surveillance of internet users.

The issue has heated up politics in Europe in past years and drawn in everyone from tech mogul Elon Musk to German Chancellor Friedrich Merz to way in on the issue.

Metsola’s center-right European People’s Party (EPP) is “clearly and actively undermining our position as Parliament,” said Raquel García Hermida-van der Walle, a Dutch member of the liberal Renew group, about the move to bring the same bill back for a second vote.

A spokesperson for Metsola said the issue was “raised and asked for” at an earlier meeting of heads of the Parliament’s political groups. No group actively objected to the plan, POLITICO reported earlier.

The EU has struggled to draft laws that overcome the deep divisions between child rights advocates and privacy proponents, and has seen legislative attempts end in a stalemate time after time.

The bill up for votes in coming days is a temporary fix: a stopgap measure that exempts tech companies from certain obligations under the bloc’s privacy law on the confidentiality of communication, allowing these firms to scan for CSAM. Lawmakers are negotiating a permanent legal solution in parallel, but those talks have also stalled after a political negotiation late last month.

Not-so-ordinary procedure

The attempt to unblock the bill is forcing legislators to dust off their EU procedural textbooks.

The European Parliament and Council of the EU are following the steps of the “ordinary legislative procedure,” which, despite its name, is almost never used in its entirety.

Usually, after the European Commission proposes a law, the Council of the EU and the Parliament produce competing versions and then they hash out a deal in three-way negotiations. | Alicia Windzio/picture alliance via Getty Images

Usually, after the Commission proposes a law, the Council and the Parliament produce competing versions and then they hash out a deal in three-way negotiations known in Brussels as a “trilogue.” Technically, this means that lawmakers only follow the first couple of steps of EU lawmaking procedures and almost never reach the formal final mechanism for managing disagreements between the institutions.

Earlier this year a long-stalled law on air passengers’ rights was passed using the dreaded “conciliation” procedure. Before that, one has to go back all the way to 2013 to find another example of the procedure’s use.

Proponents have the upper hand

The version of the CSAM bill is one that European governments have already wholeheartedly backed. National capitals in the Council in the EU in past days cleared the way for the bill to go to Parliament, following Metsola’s request that come in late June.

On Monday, Metsola’s EPP is widely expected to file a formal request to hold an urgent vote on the bill. On Tuesday, lawmakers vote on whether to hold that urgent vote. And finally, on Thursday, the plenary chamber would vote on the actual proposal.

Using this unusual procedure means backers of the bill — the center-right European People’s Party, to which Metsola belongs, and EU capitals — have the upper hand.

To reject or amend the bill coming from Council, the Parliament requires an “absolute” majority, meaning at least half of all members of the Parliament, or 361 votes. To adopt it requires a mere “simple” majority, meaning half of the members present on that day.

When Parliament voted down the Council position in March, it did so with 311 votes against the proposal, 228 in favor of it and 92 abstentions — an outcome that, in a potential vote on Thursday, would fall short of killing the bill.

If the Parliament can’t reach a decision after three months, the Council’s position is automatically adopted, the procedural rules state.

In the current Parliament, finding an absolute majority is “really quite difficult,” said Christine Reh, a professor of European politics at the Hertie School in Berlin.

Max Griera contributed reporting.