only voluntary ... No chat app is going to voluntarily add it
To cite bender from futurama:
Hahahahahhahaha.
Oh wait, you're serious? Let me laugh even harder.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Not sure if you've noticed, but "voluntary" usually results in mandatory after a while. We had this happen so often already. Remember the "Voluntary" Code of Conduct on hate speech in the EU? Yeah that started out as voluntary - then there was the DSA, digital services act, which uses the "voluntary" code of conduct as the baseline of determining if they are compliant. So the thing that started out voluntary is not effectively mandatory.
Or, in the US, there was the REAL ID system which was a voluntary system aswell - well, until it wasn't because it is now required to board flights or you'll be denied entry into certain federal facilities if you don't have it.
So no - voluntary isn't voluntary for long. There is usually mission creep which, at some point, makes it mandatory.
and even if they did you can easily switch to a chat app that doesn’t, which isn’t illegal
Very weak argument, as messaging apps are only popular if people use them - and we know exactly how hard that is for most people. Whatsapp has been shitting on people for years and still it's the most popular messaging app.
Just because there are a bunch of fascists trying to implement it doesn’t mean the entire EU is working against the general population.
That is not the point. The problem isn’t whether people pushing it are "fascists", it’s that the policy is structurally dangerous because it can be used by fascists in the future. Once the framework is in place, changing the rules becomes a matter of weeks.
Of course "the entire EU" isn't acting in bad faith. But harmful laws don’t require bad intent or unanimous malice. They only require a majority that underestimates long-term consequences. And please remember that this would not be the first badly thought out law they had passed.
In germany, there is a saying which roughly translates to: "The opposite of well done is well meant".
I don't think you understand what is being decided here. This isn't about making legal what other countries are already doing, this is creating the framework for countries to introduce this kind of shit legally.