The proposal concerns the so-called CSAM regulation, aimed at protecting against child abuse, but has been dubbed "chat control" by its critics due to the surveillance methods of digital communication proposed. Total "state" surveillance, according to the opponents.
On Thursday, S, M, L, and KD voted in favor of the proposal in the Riksdag's Justice Committee. V, SD, C, and MP objected to the formulations.
We think the parliament's proposal better combines the need to scale up the work against sexual exploitation while protecting personal integrity, says Rebecka Le Moine (MP).
Consensus required
She refers to the EU Parliament's revised formulations of the proposal, which ease up on the surveillance aspect. However, that version must be synchronized with Hungary's proposal, which the Justice Committee has now voted in favor of. For the more surveillance-heavy version to come into force, Sweden and other countries must first agree on the EU's Council of Ministers later in October – then the Council, Parliament, and Commission must agree.
There are good things in the regulation, but it must become more proportionate to the integrity issue, says Le Moine.
The Moderate Party went to the EU election opposing "chat control". In a comment to TT, the Moderate Party's group leader in the Justice Committee, Mikael Damsgaard, says:
"Sexual abuse of children is a major social problem, and our starting point has been to achieve a better balance between online security and personal integrity. The proposal being discussed now has a better balance than the original proposal. The line adopted now is almost identical to the previous line from September 2023."
"Failure"
Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson (M) says to P4 Extra that it's all about a "constant balancing act":
On the one hand, integrity, which we normally prioritize in Sweden, to protect individual integrity. A lot of secrecy and so on. On the other hand, to have effective crime prevention. Not least in a digital age when criminals often use very advanced digital tools.
C is among the parties that are critical and do not think the balance between crime prevention and personal integrity is achieved:
"To drive 'chat control' like Hungary and the government is a failure to balance these values in a way that protects integrity", says the party's legal policy spokesperson Ulrika Liljeberg in a written comment to TT.
CSAM is an abbreviation for material containing sexual abuse of children.
To combat sexual abuse online, the EU Commission proposed in May 2022, with Ylva Johansson (S) at the helm, new legislation making it mandatory for providers of online services to conduct risk assessments to determine the risk of being exploited by perpetrators. National authorities can then issue orders to review online services and issue orders for removal.
Since the processing of the proposal has been delayed, the current rules on voluntary review have been extended until 2026, pending an agreement between EU member states and the EU Parliament.
