On 13 October, the Grand Committee unanimously approved Parliament's position on the regulation on the prevention and combating of sexual violence against children (CSAM proposal, child sexual abuse material). The Committee received statements on the matter from the Constitutional Law Committee, the Administration Committee and the Transport and Communications Committee.
The Grand Committee considers that the proposed regulation has a very important goal of effectively preventing and combating online sexual violence against children through EU-level measures. The Committee considers it important that a clear and binding legal framework is created at the EU level, which can be used to enhance the detection, reporting and elimination of abuse. Like the Government, the Grand Committee emphasizes the importance of the child's best interests when weighing the relationship of the various parts of the proposal to the Constitution and fundamental and human rights.
The regulation would be a new type of EU regulation, especially in such a way that service providers could have an obligation to process communication between persons in order to detect criminal material without the authorities confirming the person's connection to the crime to be investigated or prevented. The main challenges of the negotiations have been related to the detection order aimed at service providers and its relationship with the protection of the secrecy of confidential communications.
Parliament's Constitutional Law Committee states that interference with the protection of the confidentiality of communications and other fundamental rights should be limited to what is necessary and should be proportionate. The Grand Committee considers, like the Transport and Communications Committee, that in further negotiations it is particularly important to ensure that the detection order does not lead to a general weakening, dismantling or restriction of use of end-to-end encryption or other similar information security measures, and thereby to a deterioration in the level of information security and cyber security of communications and communication services. The obligation to decrypt communications would have far-reaching and principled effects on the protection of the secrecy of confidential messages and the realization of other basic rights online.
Concerns have been raised in the expert hearings that in the proposal the scope of the detection order is not limited to certain persons but would also apply to situations where there is no specific and identified criminal suspicion. In practice, this could lead to general and unspecified monitoring of messages. The Grand Committee considers that the detection order should be regulated in a more targeted manner than proposed and that the Government should pay special attention to the views expressed by the Constitutional Law Committee.
The Constitutional Law Committee considers that the regulation on the detection order should not be approved in the proposed form, but that the Government should actively work in the further preparation to change and further specify the proposal to meet the requirements set by basic and human rights.
The Grand Committee states that the relation of the proposal to other EU legislation, such as the General Data Protection Regulation, must be clear and the obligations must be defined in such a way that they can be implemented with current technology. The Grand Committee also emphasizes the importance of cooperation and the exchange of information between the new coordinating authority (EU Centre on Child Sexual Abuse), Europol and the law enforcement authorities of the Member States as well as the authorities' sufficient resources.
The Grand Committee requires that the Government take the above into account in further negotiations. The position of Parliament, determined by the Grand Committee, is a starting point for the Government when it negotiates at the EU level.