Eventually, even Denmark’s Minister of Justice, the leading advocate for chat control, had to throw in the towel. “The search warrant will not be part of the EU presidency’s new compromise proposal,” admitted Peter Hummelgaard. “The search for material containing child sexual abuse will continue to be voluntary for tech giants.”

With Germany’s definitive opposition, there was no longer any hope for the CSAM (Child Sexual Abuse Material) regulation, which would have required WhatsApp and other tech companies to create backdoors in the encryption of our private messages, allowing judges to sift through them using an algorithm.
The Danes, who currently hold the EU presidency, had to withdraw the text. The other 14 governments that had hoped for its approval—including those of Paris, Madrid, Bucharest, and, until October, Rome—had to give up.

Checks and balances that work

The EU’s checks and balances, therefore, have safeguarded the personal freedom of 250 million citizens, who would have been subjected to mass surveillance if the matter had been under the jurisdiction of their individual nations rather than “stepmother” Europe.

Moreover, the speed with which chat control has been introduced in major democracies such as the United Kingdom and Canada (as well as, of course, in dictatorships like China, Russia, Egypt, Iran, Vietnam, Pakistan, and in partial democracies like India and South Africa) makes it easy to imagine what would have happened to those 15 European countries if they had had “sovereignty” over the issue.

The dam of European Union institutions has halted a flood that has encountered no obstacles elsewhere in the world. Only the United States, thanks to its federal system, has resisted with equal effectiveness so far.

The EU: weak as a weapon, strong as a shield

We are the first to acknowledge that the current European Union, slow and cumbersome as it is, is not equipped to handle the aggressive competition for armaments, advanced technologies, critical minerals, energy sources, or industrial production that defines our era. The European treaties were not designed for a world of cutthroat rivalry between hostile powers, and we are bitterly realizing this.

But with equal honesty, we must recognize that the current European Union, slow and cumbersome as it is, is an ironclad protector of our fundamental rights as citizens.
Without the protective net of Brussels, and without the mechanism by which an authoritarian derailment in one country harms the vital interests of others—who then unite to prevent it—Hungary and Poland would today be indistinguishable from Belarus, Greece from Nicaragua, and Italy from Venezuela.

But in the case of chat control, the defensive success was even more remarkable because the offensive did not come from backward and unstable countries: it came from the two countries considered the most advanced on our continent, Sweden and Denmark.

And it was promoted by politicians affiliated with the progressive left (as in the United Kingdom, where the Labour Party under Starmer swiftly approved a similar law, facing opposition only from Donald Trump and the financial interests of overseas big tech).

From Orbán to the Nordic Left: The Pro-Chat Control Front

It was, therefore, a proposal made mostly in good faith, driven by emotion and revulsion at child sexual abuse. One need not read Jonathan Haidt’s books to realize that one of the most powerful “moral sensors” influencing our political choices is our sensitivity to violence against those we perceive as innocent and defenseless. For many voters, this impression is so strong that they are willing to sacrifice other values, such as freedom and privacy, which seem more abstract and whose violation appears less intolerable.

This threshold can be crossed by both the right and the left, in countries considered backward or advanced: in fact, Orbán and the Nordic left defended chat control with more or less similar arguments.

Proof of this can be heard in the words of Ylva Johansson, a Swedish Social Democrat and the EU Commissioner for Home Affairs under von der Leyen, who proudly claimed responsibility for chat control in 2023.

Even Hummelgaard, the Danish rapporteur, proudly displayed the support for the proposal from Save the Children and UNICEF, as well as from smaller Scandinavian NGOs like Børns Vilkår and Digitalt Ansvar.

Liberals, conspiracy theorists, Bavarians: the anti-chat control front

On the opposing side, two political groups that usually despise each other united against chat control: classical liberals and paranoid conspiracy theorists.
Unfortunately, in the media, the latter prevailed, with narratives of an “Orwellian” or “Soviet” Europe aspiring to total control over citizens’ private lives (“After vaccines, green homes, and the obligation to accept card payments, now Ursula is spying on our messages!”).

As for the liberals, they only managed to break through via initiatives from the “nerd world” and ICT company spokespeople, who adopted liberal slogans partly for financial reasons.

Caught between these two groups is the CSU, the party of Bavarian conservatives that keeps running the Berlin government and tipped the balance against chat control in Germany (which, in turn, shifted the balance in Europe).

In short: yet another tug-of-war between freedom and security has ended—surprisingly for our times—with a victory for freedom.

Who is the most insensitive?

For some, this victory leaves a bitter aftertaste. Is it not callous to celebrate the elimination of a tool that would have uncovered pedophiles (even if with a double-digit rate of false positives, meaning innocents would have been wrongly accused)? Is it not heartless to prioritize the defense of our children from online grooming?

But the question can also be turned around: Have we lost the ability to sense the profound sanctity surrounding privacy? Do we no longer recognize the value of a society that chooses to take a step back from the intimate lives of individuals, allowing the good and evil they commit to be confronted in silence and without a cheering crowd (even when someone is on trial)?

The Catholic Church, which outlawed sex with children, is the same institution that invented the seal of confession. Why should we limit ourselves to embracing only part of this legacy today?