Two senior ministers from the German state of Baden-Württemberg have issued an urgent appeal to members of the European Parliament to extend a temporary exception to EU data protection rules that permits online platforms to scan private communications for evidence of child sexual abuse. Justice Minister Moritz Oppelt and Interior Minister Manuel Hagel, both from the Christian Democratic Union, warned that without this legal provision, the fight against child sexual exploitation would suffer a severe setback.
In a joint letter addressed to EU lawmakers and obtained by the German Press Agency, the ministers stressed that the protection of children from sexual abuse must be a top priority for any rule-of-law state. «Im Mittelpunkt stehen wehrlose Kinder, die Opfer sexuellen Missbrauchs werden oder bereits geworden sind», they wrote, emphasizing that data protection and child protection should not be pitted against each other. The letter comes ahead of a crucial vote in the European Parliament this week on whether to renew the exception, which expired in April after a previous attempt to extend it failed.
The background to the appeal lies in the heavy reliance of German law enforcement on tips from the United States. Companies such as WhatsApp, Instagram, Microsoft, and Google have been using automated programs to scan content on their platforms for illegal material and report it to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). That organization then forwards the leads to law enforcement agencies worldwide, including Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office. According to the ministers' letter, more than 200,000 such tips were transmitted to the BKA in both 2024 and 2025, and over half of them proved to be criminally relevant. The Cybercrime Center of Baden-Württemberg handles many of the resulting investigations that have a connection to the southwestern state.
Justice Minister Oppelt described the upcoming vote as a critical moment. «Das angesetzte Dringlichkeitsverfahren im Europäischen Parlament ist auf absehbare Zeit vielleicht die letzte Chance, um sexuellen Kindesmissbrauch und Kinderpornografie auch in Zukunft konsequent zu bekämpfen und Kinder zu schützen», he told dpa in Stuttgart. He stressed that a clear legal framework is needed so that online platforms can effectively detect evidence of child sexual abuse and alert the responsible authorities. Anything less, he warned, would be a heavy blow with devastating consequences for children who would have even less chance of being rescued from hopeless suffering.
The previous exception, which allowed scanning and reporting of abuse content, expired in April. At the end of March, a vote on its extension in the European Parliament failed because a majority of lawmakers wanted to restrict controls to cases where there was a concrete suspicion. EU member states, however, have so far refused to accept such limitations. The plan to extend the temporary exemption from data protection rules was therefore considered dead. In an unusual move, the EU member states have now put the issue back on the agenda, giving it a new chance for approval.
While work continues on a permanent European regulation to address the issue, it remains unclear when such a framework might come into force. The transitional arrangement is intended primarily to detect images or videos of child sexual abuse. The ministers' appeal underscores the urgency of the situation, as the legal gap leaves law enforcement without a key tool in the fight against one of the most heinous crimes. The outcome of the vote in Brussels will determine whether platforms can continue to proactively scan for abuse material or whether such efforts will be severely curtailed, potentially leaving many cases undetected.
