Overview

• Diplomatic sources say the Danish presidency’s compromise lacked the votes, so the proposal was pulled from the next EU interior ministers’ meeting.
• Justice Minister Stefanie Hubig said warrantless chat scanning is off-limits in a rule-of-law state, and CDU/CSU leader Jens Spahn publicly opposed blanket checks of private messages.
• Data protection authorities joined NGOs and major messaging providers in resisting the plan, with a petition approaching 280,000 signatures and Signal warning it could leave the EU if encryption is undermined.
• The draft envisioned client-side scanning that inspects content on devices before encryption, a design critics say weakens end-to-end security and risks false positives.
• Civil-society and technical experts cautioned the issue could return in revised form, with the Chaos Computer Club noting Germany has not ruled out targeted scanning and that quiet negotiations may continue.