The EU has delayed a vote on legislation that would have resulted in mass surveillance of all messaging platforms, including those with end-to-end encryption (E2EE).

The EU has been under growing scrutiny and criticism over its efforts to force messaging platforms to include client-side scanning, effectively bypassing E2EE. Signal President Meredith Whittaker recently slammed the bloc for playing “rhetorical games” in its efforts to pass the legislation.

Patrick Breyer–former MP for the German and the European Pirate Party—celebrated the delay as a major win for privacy proponents.

Today EU governments will not adopt their position on the EU regulation on “combating child sexual abuse”, the so-called chat control regulation, as planned, which would have heralded the end of private messages and secure encryption. The Belgian Council presidency postponed the vote at short notice. Once again the chat control proposal fails in Council.

“Without the commitment and resistance of countless individuals and organizations in Europe, the EU governments would have decided today in favour of totalitarian indiscriminate chat control , burying the digital privacy of correspondence and secure encryption,” said Breyer. “A big thanks to all who have contacted politicians and spoken out in the past few days. The fact that we have prevented the orwellian chat control for the time being should be celebrated!”

In order to pass, the legislation needed at least 15 member countries to back it. Germany, however, has emerged as a strong opponent of the legislation, having experienced first-hand the downsides of mass surveillance during the Cold War. Germany has been joined by Austria, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, and Poland.

Proponents of the legislation claim it will help fight child sexual abuse material (CSAM), and that any loss of privacy from breaking E2EE is worth it. Privacy advocates, security researchers, and even law enforcement officials have said such legislation would have limited success, if any, and would endanger far more people than it would protect.