EU Finds a Procedural Trick to Force Chat Control Through Without a Real Vote

Key Takeaways

• The European Parliament rejected extending the EU's chat control message-scanning regime in March 2026, voting 311 against, 228 in favor, and 92 abstentions.
• EPP leader Manfred Weber revived the same, unamended extension through the rarely used ordinary legislative procedure, which now requires 361 MEPs, an absolute majority, to vote it down rather than requiring a majority to pass it.
• Parliament President Roberta Metsola pushed the maneuver forward after the EPP's request on June 17, and EU member states already agreed to reinstate scanning until 2028.
• A procedural vote is scheduled for Tuesday, with the vote on chat control's actual revival set for Thursday, the last plenary day before summer recess.

A Law MEPs Already Killed Is Coming Back From the Dead

Chat control lets tech platforms voluntarily scan private messages for known child sexual abuse material through hash matching, a legal exception to the EU's ePrivacy rules that has existed since 2021. Parliament rejected extending that exception in March 2026, voting 311 against, 228 in favor, and 92 abstentions, a result critics welcomed as pushback against treating everyone like a criminal.

That verdict didn't hold for long. On June 17, EPP leadership asked Parliament President Roberta Metsola to push the same file forward as an interim measure, and no other political group objected. Metsola told EU leaders the next day to move on with the legislation, and the Council agreed last week to reinstate scanning, unchanged, running until 2028.

The maneuver works because of which procedure Parliament is using. Under the ordinary legislative procedure at second reading, the Council's text is adopted automatically unless an absolute majority of all MEPs, at least 361, votes it down or amends it. A simple majority against is no longer enough to stop it.

The EPP Is Rewriting the Odds, Not Just the Rules

Parliament will first vote Tuesday on whether to fast-track the file under an urgent procedure. If that passes, the decisive vote on reviving chat control lands Thursday, timed for right before the summer break, when MEPs have historically already started heading out for the holidays.

Greens/EFA MEP Ignazio Marino pushed back on the plan, calling it "mass surveillance" and arguing that protecting children calls for smarter enforcement, not scanning the private messages of millions of people who did nothing wrong.

The EPP had actually voted against extending scanning back in March, objecting to amendments from the Socialist rapporteur that would have narrowed its scope. Now it wants the extension back with none of those restrictions attached, delivered through a procedure that skips the debate it lost the first time around.

One MEP Tried to Stop It With the Rulebook Itself

Independent MEP Martin Sonneborn tried to halt the vote before it even started, citing Article 22 of Parliament's own rulebook. Posting on X, he said he asked Metsola to declare the urgent motion inadmissible, joking that "we're not in Malta here."

Sweden Herald's report on the vote points to the same justification officials keep repeating, that the legal uncertainty created by April's expiry is what's forcing this do-over, not any new evidence that voluntary scanning actually works.

Losing a vote and then rewriting the rulebook to get a different outcome is a workaround for a result Parliament had already delivered once, dressed up as routine legislative housekeeping.

And yet, the temporary scanning regime is not even the real fight. Chat Control 2.0, the permanent version still stuck in trilogue, is the one that would push scanning inside encrypted apps like Signal and WhatsApp. Whatever happens Thursday, mass scanning at the message layer does nothing to touch traffic that's encrypted before it ever reaches a platform's servers, which is exactly why interest in tools that still work keeps climbing every time a law like this resurfaces.

The EPP found a majority it couldn't win the normal way and built a rule that makes losing harder. Thursday will show how many MEPs still show up to vote for privacy when the vote counts for less than it used to.