This text was published by CEDMO, one of fifteen EDMO Hubs.
The European Union has only a few days left before the temporary exemption from the ePrivacy Directive (known as Chat Control 1.0) expires. Since 2021, this exemption has allowed online service providers to voluntarily detect child sexual abuse material. The provisional regulation is valid until Friday, April 3, 2026, after which it will expire without replacement. The European Commission’s proposal to extend its validity until August 2027 was rejected by the European Parliament in March. A permanent legal framework (known as Chat Control 2.0 – Child Sexual Abuse Regulation/CSAR), which was intended to replace the current temporary regulation, is under discussion. Here at Central European Digital Media Observatory (CEDMO), we investigated public perception of the controversial points of the planned regulation in a unique representative survey conducted in late January and early February 2026 in nine European countries (the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, Slovenia, Estonia, Finland, Germany, and France).