r/europeanunion 1d ago

Parliament 🇪🇺 European Parliament: Facts and figures

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8 Upvotes

r/europeanunion 5d ago

Question/Comment What is Chat Control? An explainer.

70 Upvotes

What is Chat Control

Chat Control is the name for two bits of legislation which have been considered by the EU (and the European Parliament). One of them has passed and one of them has not. These are called 1.0 and 2.0.

Chat control 1.0

1.0 is a temporary regulation which grants tech companies an exemption to EU privacy rules so they can voluntarily scan private messages for child sexual abuse materials. Note that this is not allowed for encrypted messages. **This has been in force since 2021 but expired last April.

On July 2nd the member states revived the original proposal and forced the bill back to the European Parliament and fast tracked the vote by doing so.

Since the legislation was already adopted once before the criteria for voting it through changed and a simple majority was no longer enough to reject it but an absolute majority (more than half of the actual seated parliament) was needed. The EP failed to gather enough votes.

  • Number of seats in parliament: 720
  • Number of votes required to reject the measure: 360
  • Number of votes: 314.

Not undemocratic. Not via the back door. A regular vote through an established procedure for a piece of legislation which had already been adopted once before.

1.0 will be in place until 2028.

Again, please note that this is voluntary and is still subject to member state legislation. Companies such as Google, Meta and Microsoft are the only ones that are actively scanning messages at the moment because they have a giant legal department which can deal with suits in that respect.

Chat control 2.0

2.0 is a proposed bill that would make it mandatory to scan messages even if they were encrypted.

This was rejected multiple times and is nowhere near becoming law. This is not on the table and won't be.

Five trilogue rounds have failed to produce a deal. The supposedly final trilogue on 29 June 2026 collapsed over suspicionless scanning; negotiations continue under the Irish presidency.

Source: https://fightchatcontrol.eu/chat-control-overview

Hope this helps explain some things.

Kind regards,

KunKun.


r/europeanunion 5h ago

Every night people die – while air defense missiles sit in Western warehouses

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37 Upvotes

r/europeanunion 1h ago

Greece Pushes Back Against EU russian LNG Sanctions to Protect Shipping Interests

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greekreporter.com
• Upvotes

Greece has emerged as one of the main opponents of a proposed European Union ban on the transportation of russian liquefied natural gas (LNG) to third countries, arguing that the measure would disproportionately damage Greek shipping interests and strand billions of dollars in specialised vessels.


r/europeanunion 3h ago

The showdown over Europe's carbon market begins

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theparliamentmagazine.eu
6 Upvotes

r/europeanunion 6h ago

All the trade promises the EU and the US never meant to keep

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politico.eu
8 Upvotes

r/europeanunion 1d ago

While attending an EU Foreign Affairs Committee meeting, Irish leftist Lynn Boylan complained about not being allowed to use her own language. When it was pointed out that she was entirely free to speak Irish, she quickly shifted gears, conceding, "I wasn’t prepared, so I’ll use English."

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384 Upvotes

r/europeanunion 2h ago

EU history The First Eurofederalist Manifesto Was Published 127 Years Before Ventotene

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nikodemskrobisz.substack.com
3 Upvotes

r/europeanunion 9m ago

Official 🇪🇺 The Beautiful Chaos of 24 EU Languages

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youtube.com
• Upvotes

r/europeanunion 23m ago

Greece says proposed EU sanctions against Russia risk ceding LNG market to rivals

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• Upvotes

r/europeanunion 3h ago

Professional judges, 2024

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2 Upvotes

r/europeanunion 4h ago

[Interview] ‘Some of the resistance comes from people fearing they’ll end up without a job,’ says industry expert on Europe’s slow electrification

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euobserver.com
5 Upvotes

r/europeanunion 54m ago

Zelenskyy reshuffles senior EU team

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• Upvotes

r/europeanunion 1d ago

Good luck to the Dutch firefighters deployed in Spain via the EU Civil Protection. For the first time, the EU is pre-positioning teams across high risk areas in Europe before wildfires strike

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85 Upvotes

r/europeanunion 1h ago

Video Is the 9-5 Dead? Europe’s Work-Life Balance Rules Explained

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youtu.be
• Upvotes

This is a video by the social team of the European Commission. We're trying this new thing where we make videos out of comments from social media.


r/europeanunion 2h ago

Official 🇪🇺 2026 Rule of law report - Communication and country chapters

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commission.europa.eu
1 Upvotes

r/europeanunion 2h ago

Taras Kachka named Ukraine’s new ambassador to the EU

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politico.eu
1 Upvotes

r/europeanunion 1d ago

Paywall Opinion: The World Is Cutting Ties With America. It’s Already Costing Us.

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nytimes.com
104 Upvotes

r/europeanunion 14h ago

Non-EU countries pledge compliance with EU sanctions on chemical weapons

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brusselstimes.com
10 Upvotes

r/europeanunion 3h ago

Why a Brussels–Nicosia–Eastern Mediterranean strategic affairs platform would benefit the European Union

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eureporter.co
0 Upvotes

r/europeanunion 3h ago

"Hey Google" is set to face competition: the EU opens the door to new AI assistants

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eunews.it
0 Upvotes

r/europeanunion 21h ago

Revealed: how Europe’s most powerful farming lobby killed EU’s pesticide law

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theguardian.com
23 Upvotes

r/europeanunion 22h ago

Is Ukraine's Patriot interceptor shortage actually a stockpile problem, or a decision-making one? Looking for anyone tracking this closer.

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26 Upvotes

Ukraine's Ministry of Defence has stated a critical shortage of PAC-2/PAC-3 interceptors — currently the primary countermeasure against the ballistic missile strikes hitting Kyiv and other cities on a near-nightly basis.
What I haven't seen properly investigated: reporting suggests the US and EU member states hold PAC-2/PAC-3 stockpiles sufficient to meaningfully close this gap. If that's accurate, this isn't a production or capacity shortage — it's a question of why existing stock isn't being transferred faster, and who's making that call.
That distinction matters a lot for how this should be covered and pressured politically. "We don't have enough" and "we have enough but haven't decided to send it" are very different stories, and right now most coverage seems to default to the first framing without much scrutiny.
A few open questions I think are worth digging into:
What's the actual current PAC-2/PAC-3 stock breakdown across NATO members, and how much is realistically transferable without compromising their own air defense posture?
Are there known bureaucratic or diplomatic bottlenecks in the transfer process (e.g. PURL mechanism, bilateral approvals) that explain the delay better than "no political will"?
Has any outlet done a real accountability piece tracing specific transfer decisions and who blocked or delayed them?
Not trying to push a conclusion here — genuinely think this is a story that needs someone with defense-procurement expertise to actually verify the numbers, rather than it staying at the level of advocacy statements.


r/europeanunion 16h ago

'Revolutionary' EU defence plan faces calls for faster implementation

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euronews.com
7 Upvotes

r/europeanunion 1d ago

Paywall US to fund Trump-aligned Europeans building ‘civilisational bonds’

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ft.com
37 Upvotes