JEF Malta’s Statement on the Proposed Regulation to Prevent and Combat Child Sexual Abuse
JEF Malta stands firmly for a Europe that protects both children and fundamental rights, not one or the other. We are deeply concerned with the Council’s push to advance the Commission’s “Regulation to prevent and combat child sexual abuse” (widely dubbed Chat Control), which could compel messaging services to scan private communications—including those protected by end-to-end encryption—via techniques such as client-side scanning. This approach risks crossing a constitutional red line under the EU Charter (Articles 7 and 8) and creating a generalised surveillance infrastructure that is neither necessary nor proportionate.
We readily recognise the urgent, shared duty to fight child sexual abuse online. Parliament’s own work has shown this can and must be done without mass scanning of everyone’s messages or the routine weakening of encryption. In November 2023, the European Parliament adopted a position that rejects indiscriminate scanning and seeks to protect confidential communications, a stance echoed by data-protection authorities and security experts. We urge the Council to align with this rights-respecting path.
Client-side scanning is not a harmless “safety feature”; it is a monitoring system built into personal devices. Leading technical bodies and privacy authorities warn it introduces new vulnerabilities, invites function-creep beyond CSAM, and erodes trust in secure communications relied upon by citizens, journalists, human-rights defenders, businesses and public institutions. Once deployed, the same mechanism can be repurposed for other content, with grave implications for European democracy and cybersecurity.
Malta should not be bounced into endorsing a framework that normalises mass scanning. We welcome the caution expressed by Maltese MEPs from across parties—who have publicly warned against weakening encryption and opposed generalised monitoring—and we call on the Government to take a clear, public stance in the Council against any text that mandates client-side scanning or otherwise undermines end-to-end encryption.
Malta’s digital economy, civic space, and national security all depend on robust encryption and the confidentiality of correspondence. Breaking these protections would set a dangerous precedent at home and abroad. We therefore urge Malta to champion a child-protection strategy that is effective and fundamentally European: one that safeguards children without turning every citizen’s private conversation into a potential evidence file.