The European Parliament is voting today on whether to keep mass scanning of private messages legal in the EU — a repeat vote that digital rights advocates are calling an "unprecedented manoeuvre."

What Happened

On March 11, Parliament voted to replace blanket mass surveillance with targeted monitoring of suspects under judicial oversight — a decision that would have let the current Chat Control interim regulation lapse on April 3. The Council of Ministers refused to compromise in trilogue negotiations, effectively letting the process fail.

Now the conservative EPP group is forcing a new vote on March 26 to reverse that outcome and keep the indiscriminate scanning regime in place.

What Chat Control Actually Does

The interim regulation (2021/1232), expiring April 3, currently permits US corporations including Meta to scan private messages at scale. Three types of scanning are authorized: hash-based detection of known images and videos (which generates over 90% of reports), AI analysis of unknown images, and automated text analysis.

Critics including former MEP Patrick Breyer argue the AI-based scanning is error-prone, relies on opaque foreign databases, and floods European police with false positives rather than helping actual investigations. Researchers have also documented reliability issues with the underlying algorithms.

Why It Matters

The vote is happening today in an unusual procedural setting — a preliminary vote on Wednesday to keep it on the agenda was itself contested. Multiple political groups including S&D and Renew are reportedly split, while EPP remains unified in favor of mass scanning. The outcome will determine whether an April 3 legal gap emerges or whether indiscriminate scanning of EU citizens' private communications continues.

Privacy and encryption advocates are urging EU citizens to contact their MEPs ahead of today's session.