EU governments might soon endorse the highly controversial Child Sexual Abuse Regulation (CSAR), known colloquially as "chat control," based on a new proposal by Belgium's Minister of the Interior. According to a leak obtained by Pirate Party MEP and shadow rapporteur Patrick Breyer, this could happen as early as June.

The proposal mandates that users of communication apps must agree to have all images and videos they send automatically scanned and potentially reported to the EU and police.

This agreement would be obtained through terms and conditions or pop-up messages. To facilitate this, secure end-to-end encrypted messenger services would need to implement monitoring backdoors, effectively causing a ban on private messaging. The Belgian proposal frames this as "upload moderation," claiming it differs from "client-side scanning." Users who refuse to consent would still be able to send text messages but would be barred from sharing images and videos.