The European Parliament voted on Thursday in favor of granting companies such as WhatsApp, Microsoft, and Google a temporary additional period to continue scanning private conversations, with the aim of detecting any material related to child sexual exploitation.

The previous arrangement, which granted messaging apps a temporary exemption from EU data protection laws to carry out this type of monitoring, expired last April, after the European Parliament refused to extend it without substantial amendments.

European Parliament President Roberta Metsola then reintroduced the file on this transitional arrangement to the agenda, in parallel with ongoing negotiations on a permanent long-term framework.

This temporary arrangement is set to remain in effect until April 2028, but its final activation requires a response from the European Commission to Parliament's proposals, as well as final approval from member states.

Although the legal text does not explicitly allow breaking end-to-end encryption (which has become a common standard in apps like WhatsApp and Signal), the member states' proposal permits automated checks on the devices themselves.

Experts call this technique 'client-side scanning', where a program embedded in the smartphone or computer directly examines the content of messages, photos, and videos before they are encrypted and sent.

But the European Parliament strongly opposes this mechanism and insists that content – even if not encrypted – should remain free from any interference.

Parliament also stressed that any material not previously classified as child sexual exploitation material should not be referred to judicial authorities until it is verified by a human element, rather than relying solely on automated scanning.