The draft report of the European Parliament on EU strategy for a more effective fight against child sexual abuse welcomes and shares the European Commission's proposal’s main aims. Yet the draft report includes a number of new elements. For instance, it includes in its scope search engines and other artificial intelligence systems and limits CSA scanning in E2E encryption to metadata analysis in order to detect suspicious patterns of behaviour without having access to the content of the encrypted communication. Javier ZARZALEJOS (EPP, ES) Rapporteur, Paul TANG (S&D, NL), Hilde VAUTMANS (Renew, BE), Patrick BREYER (Greens/EFA, DE) and Cornelia ERNST (The Left, DE), shadow rapporteurs, hold a press conference on the proposal for a Regulation laying down rules to prevent and combat child sexual abuse. This transcription is a result of an automatic process. Please check against delivery.

Brussels

VAUTMANS, Hilde (Renew, BE)

press conference

TANG, Paul (S&D, NL)

fight against child sex crimes (T)

rights of the child (T)

children's rights (T)

ERNST, Cornelia (The Left, DE)

ZARZALEJOS, Javier (EPP, ES)

BREYER, Patrick (Greens/EFA, DE)

Press conference by Javier ZARZALEJOS (EPP, ES) rapporteur, Paul TANG (S&D, NL), Hilde VAUTMANS (Renew, BE), Patrick BREYER (Greens/EFA, DE) and Cornelia ERNST (The Left, DE): Proposal for a Regulation laying down rules to prevent child sexual abuse

SOUNDBITE (English), Javier ZARZALEJOS (EPP, ES), Rapporteur, Thank you and good afternoon and thank you for joining us in this press conference. I am accompanied by my colleague, fellow rapporteurs in this file, Mr. Paul Tang from S&amp;D group, Mrs. Hilde Vautmans, Renew, Mr. Patrick Breyer from the Greens, and Ms.Cornelia Ernst from the left. Mr. Vincenzo Sofo from ICR and Annalisa Tardino from the ID group cannot be here with us, but they have expressed their support for the for the rapporteur.

SOUNDBITE (English), Javier ZARZALEJOS (EPP, ES), Rapporteur, Let me start by a quite simple statement that I'm very pleased to confirm that last Tuesday morning we reached an agreement on the Parliament's position on the proposal for a regulation laying down rules to prevent and combat child sexual abuse. The compromise has got very broad support, and this joint press conference shows, and I have to stress that this outcome has been possible thanks to the commitment of the work done by all and no exception in this, by all political groups in Parliament. The spirit of compromise has prevailed.

SOUNDBITE (English), Javier ZARZALEJOS (EPP, ES), Rapporteur, We started from different positions. It hasn't been easy to make this exercise of of approach, but we have been working in this file in an extremely controversial atmosphere, sometimes. But we have preserve our spirit of conciliation and compromise. 22 political meetings, 22 shadow meetings, and 22 meetings at technical level. That gives a quite accurate idea of how much work this has required. We have done our best to produce a report on an effective legal framework legally sound unworkable. And in my opinion, there is a positive balance between children protection, the digital sphere and the respect for fundamental rights.

SOUNDBITE (English), Javier ZARZALEJOS (EPP, ES), Rapporteur, But the report also has found a necessary balance between prevention, mitigation and detection. We have tried to take a comprehensive view in the fight against child sexual abuse online, which needs to develop a variety of strategies to succeed. There is no massive scanning or general monitoring of the web, but is no indiscriminate scanning of private communications or backdoors to weaken encryption. There are no legal or technical shortcuts, but there is a positive and compelling duty to put in place legal tools to prevent and combat these heinous crime that is reflected on the Internet in the form of child sexual abuse material.

SOUNDBITE (English), Javier ZARZALEJOS (EPP, ES), Rapporteur, So this resolution and our report has to do with millions of images of children being abused which circulate on the Internet around the world, and especially in the European Union. It has to do with the millions of images self-produced by children, victims of solicitations that are being widely disseminated, obviously without consent. It has to do with the thousands of victims and survivors who know that pictures and videos are still being circulated and who suffer from the victimisation ones over and over again.

SOUNDBITE (English), Javier ZARZALEJOS (EPP, ES), Rapporteur, So our aim in this regulation is to lay down this uniform rules. All providers will have to assess the risk of misuse of the service for the dissemination of child sexual abuse material or for the solicitation of children. And put in place measures to mitigate those risks where necessary to detect, report and remove such abuse. We have limited the scope to the number of independent communications, thus excluding other communications and also we have included exceptions in the duty to conduct risk assessment for providers which are not substantially exposed to online child sexual abuse, and also, we have established a simplified procedure for SMEs.

SOUNDBITE (English), Javier ZARZALEJOS (EPP, ES), Rapporteur, Once the providers have identified this risk, they will have to put in place the mitigation measures to address it. We have provided an extensive list of possible mitigation measures which providers can decide to use. We have to strengthen the principle of safety by design. We have improved parental controls, make compulsory the establishment of users reporting mechanisms allow for the use of age verification systems in case of risk of solicitation of children.

SOUNDBITE (English), Javier ZARZALEJOS (EPP, ES), Rapporteur, We also agreed, and this is a significant change to the Commission proposals, that specific mitigation measures will be compulsory for services directly targeting children, for platforms primarily used for the dissemination of pornographic content and for number independent interpersonal communication services within games.

SOUNDBITE (English), Javier ZARZALEJOS (EPP, ES), Rapporteur, Only if providers do not comply with the obligations set out in the regulation and as a measure of last resort, a judicial authority and only a judicial authority in the view of the Parliament will be able to issue a detention order, which means that the provider will have to deploy certain technologies to detect known and new child sexual abuse material. We have agreed to exclude grooming from the scope of the detection order, and that means the text messages will be not included in the scope of these judicial decisions.

SOUNDBITE (English), Javier ZARZALEJOS (EPP, ES), Rapporteur, However, we have agreed to include a review clause. So within three years from the entry into force of the regulation, the Commission shall submit a report and if it is the case, a new legislative proposal to the European Parliament and to the Council on the necessity and feasibility of including solicitation of children in the scope of the detection orders taken into account, and I think this is important, in particular the reliability and accuracy of the detection technologies.

SOUNDBITE (English), Javier ZARZALEJOS (EPP, ES), Rapporteur, In order to comply with the UK's law and respect the fundamental rights involved, it was our concern to have a report legally sound. So the detection order will be targeted to specific individual users and groups of users which are found reasonably suspicious of being linked to child sexual abuse material. The detection order will be limited in time and the rapporteurs have agreed to exclude from the detection order and to end encrypted communications, as I mentioned before.

SOUNDBITE (English), Javier ZARZALEJOS (EPP, ES), Rapporteur, So providers shall decide on which technologies they will use to comply with detection obligations. But those technologies will have to meet the criteria and safeguards set out in the regulation and safeguards that we have remarkably strengthened. This legislative proposal also touches upon the rights of victims, and that is something that we have had very present in our in our debates.

SOUNDBITE (English), Javier ZARZALEJOS (EPP, ES), Rapporteur, The Commission proposal contained a specific rights for victims to request information of the material depicting them, which are being found in providing services, but also the right to request the removal of this content. Our report adds to those rights the right to receive support and assistance, both from the EU centre and from the coordinating authorities at national level. And we have agreed on the creation of a new Victims Rights and Survivor Consultative Forum. So the views of the victims and survivors are heard are taken into account.

SOUNDBITE (English), Javier ZARZALEJOS (EPP, ES), Rapporteur, It is very important that this regulation will set up the EU centre to contribute to the objectives of the regulation, and we have also improved on strengthen the role of the EU centre. We decided to rename it as the EU Centre for Child Protection and the centre will become the reported channel for the entire European Union. It will receive, filter, assess and forward reports to competent national authorities and Europol. And through this procedure we do hope that law enforcement authority can focus on the specific duties and make the most of their resources.

SOUNDBITE (English), Javier ZARZALEJOS (EPP, ES), Rapporteur, One of the main contributions is that the EU centre will have the possibility to conduct searches on hostage service provider for publicly accessible content. And I insist publicly accessible content, something that other similar centres such as the NEC made in the US and the Canadian Centre for Child Protection already do. We have also improved the data protection oversight through the clarification of the role of the European Data Protection Supervisor and the National Data Protection Authorities while creating the position of a fundamental rights officer within the European Centre.

SOUNDBITE (English), Javier ZARZALEJOS (EPP, ES), Rapporteur, Well, these, in my opinion, are the main features and main elements of the of the compromise that we have reached, and now I would invite my fellow rapporteurs to take the floor. So in the usual order of the political groups, Paul, please I will be delighted if you take the floor.

SOUNDBITE (English), Paul TANG (S&D, NL), Thank you Javier, thank you for your for your very good introduction, thank you also for the colleagues because I think this is a rather unique and important moment. My first time in my career in the European Parliament that we feel the need to go out with a press conference and to have all political groups on board. We had our differences within our groups, between the groups, but we were very much worked from the idea that we wanted to protect children.

SOUNDBITE (English), Paul TANG (S&D, NL), I realised more and more during the fall how unsafe the internet is. Someone compared it, is like leaving your child in a very populated, busy city centre without a parent. That's how the internet is and I think they brought us together. I think we have all been in touch with an organisation like Brave, and we have conversations with the victims, and it all spurred me and others to, to work as hard as possible to get a compromise, even though if we were starting from very different positions.

SOUNDBITE (English), Paul TANG (S&D, NL), We did that by trying to work on a positive plan, by bringing everything on the table we could think that would be effective. And Javier already summarised that. I always I came up yesterday with an acronym is the safer is that as for safety by design, for verification and for filing user reports, the E for end to end encryption are protected and are for removal orders and the calling off the web. It's sort of summarised that we want to make the internet a safer place and we put everything on the table. But it has already been explained by by Javier.

SOUNDBITE (English), Paul TANG (S&D, NL), Let me take the opportunity to make two political remarks. The first is I would like to see that the Council, which gets stuck on the difficult discussion on the detection order, takes example from the European Parliament. We hear here united European Parliament, and that's virtually impossible. But this is a strong signal in my mind to the council. Hurry up, look at our proposal. Consider it. This is the way forward.

SOUNDBITE (English), Paul TANG (S&D, NL), Second of all, this also implies for the Commission. The Commission has come forward proposal, I still see the defence from the Commission. Now it's time if you want to make the internet a safer place for children to seriously consider the Parliament proposal. And that is all the more urgent because we know that there is a temporary derogation that still allows for some scanning and some which is a source for police to find material that is helpful in their investigation.

SOUNDBITE (English), Paul TANG (S&D, NL), I'm afraid that once Facebook will encrypt end to end Facebook Messenger, this source will dry up. And we need we have something in place where we can make the Internet safer for children. So please, Commission and Council, hurry up, Get on board.

SOUNDBITE (English), Hilde VAUTMANS (Renew, BE), Well, thank you very much. And thank you very much, colleagues, because I think and we started a few months ago, that was unthinkable, that we would have such a broad majority on a proposal that is really a good proposal. I must honestly say I think we really worked out, work together very strong with a lot of debates. We will not remember that, but a lot of debates. But the end is there.

SOUNDBITE (English), Hilde VAUTMANS (Renew, BE), I think what we made up is really, really a good step forward to protect children online and also to protect our privacy, because that was all the debate here in the parliament. I really have the ones who are really fighting. We need to protect children online better. And there are others who said, yeah, but the privacy is also very important. I think we managed this file to have a very good compromise. I always say Belgium is the king of compromises. I was there, I handed over, I think a lot of those compromises to get the file up and running.

SOUNDBITE (English), Hilde VAUTMANS (Renew, BE), For me, what is very important is that we protect children more and that we protect our privacy. And that's for me, as a liberal, it's very important. I think also what is important about this is that we need this legislation, the interim legislation. And August next year, we really needed to have this legislation. So for me and it's what Paul also said, I really hand out to the Council, I really hope that they take our proposal law so that to have all countries also on board because it's really stuck over there. So I think this proposal can be the lead for the Council also to have an agreement on this important file.

SOUNDBITE (English), Hilde VAUTMANS (Renew, BE), I think everything has been set. I will not take repetition. The only thing that for me is really, really also important is that grooming, we took it out from the detection order, but grooming is there for the preventive measures. For me, it's a major step forward and so hopefully next time we can go on further, but it was not yet the case now to have a majority on that. And then the EU centre, I think the EU centre, I really think it's a baby of us.

SOUNDBITE (English), Hilde VAUTMANS (Renew, BE), So for me, Javier, it was also important that you put in there the centre has to be in place within nine months. I have two children if I can very child in nine months and give birth to a child to nine months, this EU centre needs to be there in nine months. I think it's very symbolic, but it's also to push forward that we have this centre in place very urgently. Thank you very much.

SOUNDBITE (English), Patrick BREYER (Greens/EFA), Thank you Javier. Now indeed, we had very different different starting points in this debate and if I look back, it started with a proposal from the Commission which of course is highly controversial and divisive. Both in civil society, an industry scientists, child protection organisations have different views. Even survivors of child sexual abuse are divided over it, and that is both for its unprecedented content of what is being proposed, but also because of the methods used to enforce it as we've discussed yesterday in the LIBE Committee.

SOUNDBITE (English), Patrick BREYER (Greens/EFA), And so we negotiated on the background of of this controversy and society, but also against the backdrop of debate and Council, which was going nowhere because they still have on their table pretty much the original proposal with just very few changes. So we adopted a different approach. We decided to go for a new and consensual approach to this file by removing the contested and problematic points such as bulk scanning of entire services, even for end encrypted services or mandatory age verification for all communication services, or even excluding all children under 16.

SOUNDBITE (English), Patrick BREYER (Greens/EFA), And instead we added to the original proposal more effective and court proof and rights respecting measures to keep children safe online, many of which Javier already mentioned, such as the proactive scanning, which can, by the way, also be used on the dark net. So it's more effective. But also the safety by design for first shouldn't be public all by themselves. There should be a default that you are asked before you receive messages or seen images. You'll be asked for confirmation before you disclose your contact details or share nudity online and all that in the privacy friendly manner.

paragraph-31 We added a removal obligation on providers for the first time. So it's not in the proposal. We ensure that law enforcement will have material removed they are aware of, is not in the proposal. And so all together, I think the winners of this agreement are the children, precisely because they need protecting so much, because this crime is so injurious, they deserve an effective response and a rights respecting response that will uphold in court.

SOUNDBITE (English), Patrick BREYER (Greens/EFA), And the winners are all of us, because our privacy of correspondence, our security of course, communications is guaranteed by our proposal. And so it's good that we stand here together and have a message to to council. And the commission, indeed, as colleagues have said, that a new consensual approach on this file is the only way forward, to move forward with this proposal.

SOUNDBITE (German), Cornelia ERNST (The Left, DE), Thanks a lot. I was speaking my home language. I hope you have the possibility. Let me start by thanking you, Javier, I think you've done some excellent work here and I do value it a great deal. Now in the Parliament, we don't always go about our business in this way. I've lived through meetings when different positions were put across, they'd be excluded. This time that wasn't the case. So thank you for allowing us to table what we did table and arrive at an agreement.

SOUNDBITE (German), Cornelia ERNST (The Left, DE), Secondly, this is a slap in the face of the Commission. What we've tabled, and I think we need to call a spade a spade because the Commission wasn't focusing on protecting children but wanted mass surveillance. And I think we need to be blunt and say it in those those terms. And the Commission's approach was basically the wrong one. What they tabled took the wrong approach. And we say that it is necessary to have proportionate criminal proceedings. You need a properly trained staff for all of the various structures and of course, removal from the internet needs to be possible.

SOUNDBITE (German), Cornelia ERNST (The Left, DE), But it wasn't easy to broach all of these various topics. Some of it was controversial. And of course we don't always agree on everything. But what is good is that the detection order is limited. The scanning is only in relation to persons when there's an explicitly and clearly founded suspicion of a case of child abuse. And I think that's the main point, because otherwise we'd really have mass surveillance. Grooming then again, we didn't always agree, but we wanted to take it out everywhere. Hilde you saw it slightly differently, but I think we've arrived at a good compromise and that it's been taken out is a success.

SOUNDBITE (German), Cornelia ERNST (The Left, DE), Then transparency obligations for the EU centre when selecting the software and so on. Now of course there are issues where it's slightly unhappy now for app stores, age verification. We see some issues there still, but fine, we accept that this is a compromise then procurement of software for the EU centre. Well, we submitted some questions to Mrs. Johansson yesterday. This is a licence to print money to some extent, but you know, we have a proposal here and I think that's transparent too.

SOUNDBITE (German), Cornelia ERNST (The Left, DE), Now when it comes to council, I'm not as optimistic. I would have preferred for us to be able to decide on this alone. But the EU functions in a different way. So we're going to have a very, very hard fight with Council in trilogue, and the more we stand united, the better our chance of

SOUNDBITE (English), Javier ZARZALEJOS (EPP, ES), Rapporteur, -

Q&A Questions regarding on whether all political groups agree on the position and whether the issue of mass surveillance will impact a common position in the negotiations. -