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Coreper II couldn't agree on a common position today. So it didn't become an A-item on the agenda of next weeks Justice and Home Affairs meeting. (A-item means no discussion, just a vote that is predetermined to go through). It didn't even make a safe spot on the agenda, it's only listed as optional item (the (poss.) means possible agenda item). So #Chatcontrol most likely will stay zombie and moved to the next (polish) presidency.

https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/CM-5228-2024-INIT/en/pdf

When a position/proposal becomes an A-item on the agenda, it means that a common position has been reached in the council and no discussion is needed. It's really a teaching moment to see what happens with A-items in a council meeting. It's part of the public deliberation, so you can all watch it live. It goes like this (and I am not kidding): The meeting president says "And now the A-items." short pause "Thank you, all A-items have been decided and will be entered into the record." That's it.

The only thing that can stop a vote on an A-item is when a member state requests a removal from the list *before* the meeting starts. This happens. Not very often, but it happens. In the Software Patent "war" back in 2002-2005 we managed to get such removals a few times :)

For next weeks meeting of the Justice and Home Affairs configuration of the EU council, the current provisional list of A-items is at https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/CM-5264-2024-INIT/en/pdf Go have a look. All of these votes will be bundled and decided in a few seconds :) You might notice that some entries look weird and don't seem to belong in that specific configuration. That is also quite normal. A-items can be decided in any configuration, as there will be no discussion anyway. So any configuration can vote on them.

This is a way to speed up procedures and normally not a problem. But it has been used in the past to "sneak in" decisions in unexpected configurations. In the Software patent "war" times we had the decision on the directlve as an A-item in the Agriculture and Fisheries meetings a few times. We made some nice web banners to mobilise against that with the slogan "Something is fishy in the EU" ;)