All last fall, Europeans were in a frenzy over a European Union communications monitoring proposal designed using the worst excuse of all time and every wanna-be tyrant's favorite:
FOR THE CHILDREN
No chats, texts, videos, or messaging apps would be safe from the program, initially put forth by the Danes and dubbed Chat Control (a watered down version of which had already been in effect since 2021), because children need to be protected at all costs at all times, and to do that, the government has every right to crawl up every media orifice you use whenever they feel like it, even if it doesn't save a single child.
It might save one one day, and it might also catch you doing something naughty in the meantime.
So it's a WIN-WIN.
The only thing at the time preventing a full-blown continental panic was the fact that the Germans, as intrusive as they are on any given day, are still strangely protecive of certain privacy rights, and everyone was counting on them to be the bulwark against this advancing.
There was a false alarm that they were going to acquiesce, but didn't, and, after losing an Oct 15 vote in the EU Parliament, the Danes reportedly shelved the plan.
But it must have been in a secret, mad scientist's laboratory, because 'the plan' came roaring back a month later, wrapped in a new 'save the children' skin suit for member nations to reconsider and make the right choice, if they knew what was good for them.
In November, behind closed doors, EU ambassadors waved through the updated Chat Control plans, and a vote was expected sometime in December.
As with all things EU, it is convoluted, and a vote didn't happen until March, but when it did, it was spectacularly conclusive. The EU Parliament rejected the extension of Chat 1.0 and the imposition of new, even more restrictive and intrusive 2.0.
Free speech and privacy advocates were beside themselves with relief and glee.
End of “Chat Control”: EU Parliament Stops Mass Surveillance in Voting Thriller – Paving the Way for Genuine Child Protection!
...However, in a true voting thriller today, the Parliament finally pulled the plug on this surveillance mania: With a razor-thin majority of just a single vote, the Parliament first rejected the automated assessment of unknown private photos and chat texts as “suspicious” or “unsuspicious”. In the subsequent final vote, the amended remaining proposal clearly failed to reach a majority.
But like any horror movie monster in the woods or water at an American summer camp, Chat messaging monitoring just came crashing back through the plate-glass window.
Frustrated parliamentary surveillance advocates started going through their legislative book of tricks, and since they were never going to achieve a majority vote in their favor, they did the next thing on the checklist - handed the whole mess over to an eager-to-help European Council. On July 2, the Council adopted the failed Chat 1.0 renewal as the next best thing.
WE VOTE YES!
Because the European Council had approved it, for Parliament to block it - the same Parliament which had already rejected it twice, remember - it would now take a 2/3 supermajority instead of a simple one.
...The Council’s move shifts the file onto a different procedural track. The position adopted on 2 July passes to the Parliament for a second reading, where the rules are the reverse of the March vote: to reject or amend the text, an absolute majority of members is required – 361 votes; in its absence, the Council’s position is automatically adopted.
Oh, neat trick, huh?
But that's not the only thing that the European People's Party (EPP) and others frantically pushing this did. They petitioned for the invocation of what's called an 'urgency procedure.' In other words, a hurry up and jam this through now exemption, which they got.
It was a highly irregular, possibly illegal, but brilliant tactical move because Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) were already leaving Strasbourg to head home for the summer break, as there was no legislation left on the docket.
Now there was legislation that needed an absolute majority to crush, or it became law. And MEPs were already out of town.
...The calendar is tight. At the request of the European People’s Party, the chamber voted today, Tuesday 7 July, on whether to invoke the urgency procedure; if approved, the final vote is scheduled for Thursday 9 July, the last plenary session before the summer recess. “Normally, when Parliament rejects a text, the Council stops working on it. Now we are being forced into a second vote,” Green MEP Markéta Gregorová told Euronews.
And, surprise!
The EU Parliament voted today. Even though the measure technically failed to 'pass,' because they did not have enough votes to reach an 'absolute' majority, they could not stop the renewal. And now Europeans are faced with an intrusive, privacy-destructive monster in 2.0 waiting in the wings to replace it.
BREAKING:
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) July 9, 2026
The European Parliament just passed Chat Control 1.0
A proposal to stop the new law, which will allow big tech companies to voluntarily scan all private messages, needed an absolute majority of 361 voted but received only 314 votes.
As it was the last day before… pic.twitter.com/YPZGM7FHRe
...As it was the last day before summer recess, many MEPs had returned to their home countries and didn’t take part in the surprise vote. Chat Control 2.0 is still being prepared. That law will make it mandatory to scan people’s private messages.
European democracy - if at first you don't succeed, end run again and again until you do.
...If anybody cares, what actually happened is that an extension of the European Union’s mass surveillance regulation known as Chat Control 1.0 failed to make it out of the European Parliament twice in March. Unable to summon a clear parliamentary majority, advocates (mostly in the centre-right European People’s Party [EPP]) turned to the European Council, which adopted the failed Chat Control 1.0 renewal on 2 July. The Council’s position hardens automatically into law unless the European Parliament can summon an absolute majority to stop it. To forestall any such majority from forming, the EPP on Tuesday moved with member state backing for urgent procedure, angling to force their scheme through in the last days before the summer holiday, after many MEP’s had already left. The parliament narrowly approved the urgent procedure, and in consequence there were not enough votes to stop Chat Control 1.0 when it came for a vote today. Hours ago, a majority of 314 MEPs voted to stop Chat Control against the wishes of the Council, while a minority of 276 voted to let it happen. Because 314 is less than the absolute majority of 361, Chat Control 1.0 passed even though most MEPs present didn’t want it to.
The EPP's machinations were led by a German who has worked for years to undermine the few privacy rights his fellow Germans have left.
So, when he couldn't do it at the Bundestag level?
He moved up to where he could.
...His name is Manfred Weber, and he’s a Bavarian politician (CSU) who also happens to be president of the pro-surveillance EPP and leader of the EPP faction in the European Parliament. Weber loves electronic surveillance and he has been the driving force behind Chat Control from the beginning. Naturally, Chat Control is something that Weber would have a lot of trouble imposing in Germany, where surveillance is widely deplored and where our Basic Law guarantees as “inviolable” the so-called Briefgeheimnis – “the privacy of correspondence, posts and telecommunications.” From his perch in the European Parliament, however, he has been able to hollow out this core constitutional principle of the Federal Republic from a procedurally rigged vote in Strasbourg, without any domestic debate or anybody in the Bundestag having a single thing to say about it.
This is a very advanced novel form of democracy that we have achieved here in the European Union.
In a collective, the worst people always rise to the top.
Editor’s Note: Here at HotAir, we’ve been dealing with real government suppression of free speech for YEARS. Despite the threats and consequences, we refuse to go silent and remain committed to delivering the truth.
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