The European Parliament has decided that social networks will be able to continue to identify and voluntarily report materials containing sexual abuse of children. However, they will not be allowed to scan messages protected by end-to-end encryption from communication applications, IPN reports.

The decision was made on Thursday, when the MEPs adopted a series of amendments to the derogation from the ePrivacy rules. The main change explicitly excludes from the scope of the law communications protected by end-to-end encryption, regardless of whether this technology is already applied or is to be implemented.

At the same time, the European legislature introduced the requirement that any measure to detect illegal content must be subject to prior judicial approval. This restriction aims to limit the ability of electronic communication service providers to voluntarily monitor user activity for the purpose of identifying materials containing child sexual abuse.

The derogation is temporary in nature and aims to prevent a legal vacuum until the conclusion of negotiations on a permanent regime to combat online sexual abuse. European institutions continue discussions on this topic, with most aspects of the new legal framework already agreed upon in the first half of the current year.

The adopted amendments will be transmitted to the EU Council, which has three months at its disposal to approve or reject them. If the Council does not accept all the amendments proposed by the MEPs, the European Parliament and the Council will enter the conciliation procedure to reach a final agreement on the legislative act.