No one has the right to read your private messages

Zagreb, 22 August 2025 – At a press conference yesterday, Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković accused the opposition of supporting the so-called “chat control” proposal debated in the European Parliament’s plenary session in Strasbourg on 17 June this year. The official name of this proposal is the Regulation on preventing and combating child sexual abuse (COM(2022)209). If adopted in its original form, it would allow law enforcement authorities to monitor the private communications of all EU citizens — including messages sent via applications that use end-to-end encryption.

However, the Prime Minister’s claim is misleading. The European Parliament did not vote on this regulation in June. Instead, MEPs voted on a Proposal to amend the 2011 Directive on combating the sexual abuse and sexual exploitation of children and child pornography.

Prime Minister Plenković is therefore spreading false information — whether deliberately, to create the impression of broad political consensus in Croatia for the controversial “chat control” proposal, or out of a lack of understanding of how the European legislative process works. Either way, it is deeply concerning that he would misrepresent such a serious matter with profound implications for Croatian citizens.

On 17 June, MEP Gordan Bosanac — together with colleagues from the SDP, HDZ, and most other Croatian MEPs — voted in favor of the amendments to the 2011 Directive. This directive has nothing to do with “chat control.” While both legislative files belong to the EU’s broader strategy to strengthen the fight against child sexual abuse and share similar titles, they are entirely different: one is a regulation, the other a directive; they have different rapporteurs; they entered parliamentary procedure two years apart.

Most importantly, the directive amendments contain no provisions on mass surveillance or monitoring of private communications.

By contrast, the proposed regulation (COM(2022)209) — still awaiting a vote in the European Parliament — does raise these concerns. MEP Bosanac, the We Can! party, and the Greens firmly oppose this regulation, which would enable blanket surveillance of all citizens’ private conversations. Such a measure directly violates Article 7 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, a principle upheld by the Court of Justice of the EU in the landmark Schrems I ruling (paragraph 94) and confirmed by the Legal Service of the Council of the EU.

In the previous parliamentary term, the Greens advocated for a targeted approach: surveillance should apply only to users already identified as suspicious, rather than subjecting all citizens to mass monitoring. Those who abuse the internet to commit crimes must be investigated and prosecuted, but this must be done through focused, evidence-based surveillance, not indiscriminate spying. Privacy is a fundamental human right and must remain a safe space for individual freedom and identity.

Finally, MEP Bosanac calls on Prime Minister Plenković to clearly oppose the harmful “chat control” regulation at the European Council and to stand up for the right to privacy of all Croatian citizens.