EU Parliament Revives Mass Scanning of Private Communications Through Procedural Maneuver After Previously Rejecting Proposal

Analysis
Whether the Council accepts Parliament's end-to-end encryption carve-out by its October deadline is genuinely uncertain: the amendment codifies existing practice rather than compelling new behavior, and the Council gains little by formalizing what it can otherwise leave unresolved. Rejection triggers a Conciliation Committee, though mass scanning under the revived derogation continues on unencrypted platforms regardless. This judgment carries moderate confidence, reflecting procedural reporting corroborated independently across advocacy, national-outlet, and official-record sources rather than a single feed, but no direct signal yet from Council deliberations. Article 294 TFEU's second-reading rules may simply be functioning as designed, favoring a negotiated Council text against a Parliament unable to muster an absolute majority to block it, rather than reflecting a unique EPP-engineered maneuver. The same arithmetic now hands EPP and the Council a reusable template for the stalled Chat Control 2.0 talks resuming in September, with the encryption boundary's status at that trilogue hinging on Council's October answer.