EU Extends Temporary Derogation for CSAM Detection Until April 2028

The European Parliament adopted amendments at second reading on July 9, 2026, to the temporary regime allowing service providers to voluntarily detect, report, and remove online child sexual abuse material, explicitly excluding communications to which end-to-end encryption applies, has applied, or will apply. The Council subsequently approved Parliament's amendments on July 23, 2026, and the temporary regime was formally reinstated until April 3, 2028 by Regulation (EU) 2026/1881, after the previous derogation expired on April 3, 2026 when Parliament rejected the proposed extension at the end of its first reading.

The renewed derogation permits voluntary scanning but carves out encrypted channels, leaving a detection gap precisely where threat actors operate with operational impunity. An AI-driven detection architecture that flags coercion, sustained targeting and escalation patterns in direct messages intercepts harm in real time across platforms including Instagram, Snapchat, Discord and Roblox, without requiring platforms to decrypt messages or scan content. Guardii operates at the conversational layer, surfacing a child in crisis to a parent, school or professional and enabling rapid escalation to law enforcement when a grooming, sextortion or CSAM threat is detected, addressing the gap left by encryption without demanding a cryptographic backdoor.