Released: the Council’s own note on the sixth Chat Control trilogue

The Irish presidency’s informal meeting of EU justice ministers, Dublin Castle, 17 July 2026. Photo: Council of the EU, © European Union, 2026.

The Council of the EU has released to Brussels Record, and published, two of its working documents on the proposed regulation against child sexual abuse online, known as Chat Control 2.0. One is the presidency’s own account of the sixth trilogue on 29 September. The other is the 575-page four-column table that sets out, line by line, the Commission’s proposal, the Parliament’s and the Council’s negotiating mandates, and the draft agreement as it stood after a technical meeting on 10 September. Both were marked LIMITE; the copies now on the Council’s document server carry a PUBLIC stamp.

How the papers became public

Brussels Record asked the Council on 5 October for four working documents, under Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 on public access to documents. On 27 October the Council sent WK 15082/26 and WK 13816/26 and put both on its document server. For the other two, WK 14760/26, the documents prepared for the sixth trilogue, and WK 14059/26, a presentation by the Commission, it extended its deadline to 18 November, because consultations on them are still under way.

What the presidency’s note says

• Provisionally agreed. The EU Centre’s own-initiative searches in public content, covering known and new material. The note says this provisional agreement on the tasks of the EU Centre “can pave the way” for launching the procedure to establish the agency’s seat.
• Agreed in principle, as part of a package. Detection orders in public content, limited to known material “to avoid a general monitoring obligation”; no specific rules for providers’ own-initiative searches in public content, which “could be considered a mitigation measure”; and the provisions on redress, technologies and safeguards. All of it is “subject to agreement on the entire detection package”, and the note counts every element as part of “a possible package deal”.
• Not agreed. Everything on non-public content: “The main open issues remain the targeting of detection/searches and their scope.”
• The Council’s red lines. For providers’ own-initiative searches in non-public content, the presidency said member states could accept some of the Parliament’s conditions, such as a search plan, review after the fact and searches targeted at specific parts of a service and, where possible, at individual users. But any solution “must not discourage providers from carrying out voluntary searches”, must not delay them, and should cover known and new material and grooming. The presidency also clarified that “end-to-end encrypted content would be excluded from the scope of searches”.
• The Parliament’s requests. Searches limited to known material, using the EU Centre’s indicators; review of a search plan by an independent administrative authority instead of a judge only in member states that notify the Commission of such a derogation for justified reasons; searches to start only once the complete plan has been sent for review; a possible review clause for grooming; and transitional rules so that providers scanning voluntarily today can continue until the regulation applies.
• Detection orders in private content. The Parliament considers detection orders “targeted to specific users and limited to known CSAM” a key element; according to the note, its rapporteur said they should be a measure of last resort, not a duplicate of criminal investigations. The presidency “recalled that it did not have a mandate to agree with detection orders in private content”. It explained that some member states oppose orders targeted at specific users, seeing “no added value” and an overlap with criminal procedures, while others oppose orders “resulting in indiscriminate scanning”. The note does not say which states.
• Next steps. National delegations were asked to give their views at the counsellors’ meeting of 5 October: whether they could endorse the provisional agreement reached at the trilogue, how they assess the draft text on own-initiative searches in non-public content, and whether they could accept detection orders in non-public content “targeted to specific users and limited to known CSAM as a measure of last resort”. A technical meeting was planned for 12 October, “in preparation of the seventh trilogue tentatively scheduled for December 2026 at the European Parliament”.

What the four-column table shows

WK 13816/26 sets out, line by line, the Commission’s proposal, the Parliament’s negotiating mandate, the Council’s negotiating mandate and the draft agreement as it stood after the technical meeting of 10 September. In the Council’s mandate column, every line of Section 2, “Detection obligations”, which covers detection orders in Articles 7 to 11, reads “deleted”, apart from lines the Parliament added, which are blank there. The Parliament’s mandate keeps detection orders, “limited to individual users, a specific group of users, either as such or as subscribers to a specific channel of communication”, where there are “reasonable grounds of suspicion for a link, even an indirect one”, with child sexual abuse material, and it excludes communications “to which end-to-end encryption is, has been or will be applied”. The texts on detection agreed in principle on 29 September, including detection orders in public content, are not in this table; the draft texts on detection prepared for the sixth trilogue are part of WK 14760/26, which the Council has not yet released.

What it changes in the record

Until now, the agreement in principle on public content rested on press reports; the Council’s own note now records it, with its conditions. The date of the seventh trilogue, reported by MLex and Patrick Breyer as 8 December, is in the note as tentatively scheduled for December 2026 at the European Parliament, without a day. The note names no member state, so the count of governments does not change: nine are on record against mandatory scanning of private messages, with 32.9 % of the EU population, 2.1 points short of the more than 35 % that blocks a Council vote (governments page). The tracker, Who decides and the documents list now link both papers. The Council’s reply on the two remaining papers is due by 18 November.

Sources

• Council of the EU, presidency, WK 15082/26, “Outcome of the 6th trilogue on 29 September 2026 and way forward”, 30 September 2026, released 27 October 2026.
• Council of the EU, presidency, WK 13816/26, “Four-column table with the outcome of the interinstitutional technical meeting on 10 September 2026”, 11 September 2026, released 27 October 2026.
• Council of the EU, General Secretariat, letter to Brussels Record on its request for access to documents, ref. 26/3583, 27 October 2026.
• Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 regarding public access to European Parliament, Council and Commission documents.
• MLex, “Online providers may see EU lawmakers soften demands for private CSAM searches”, 22 October 2026.
• Patrick Breyer, “Chat Control”, timeline and list of Council documents, checked 28 October 2026.
• Brussels Record, “The sixth trilogue: a deal on the EU Centre, none on private messages”, 2 October 2026.
• Brussels Record, “Where the 27 governments stand”, as of 28 October 2026.