Edit: Here's the actual regulation in question: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/interim-reg...
I haven't read it yet - but I'd guess my comment below that I made without reading it is probably not understanding what it actually proposes.
Edit2: Skimming it - it's not even clear to me it's about encryption at all? But about allowing creating laws around getting companies to participate in blocking child abuse imagery (that many are already doing voluntarily)? Am I missing something? I don't see anything about requiring unencrypted communications of these companies. It sounds like it's even just allowing certain practices that may have already been in place prior to some other EU privacy law?
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Child abuse imagery is a real problem and though I'm sympathetic to the difficulty fighting it, encryption ban is not the right tradeoff.
FB has actually implemented something good here, basically encrypted communication but users can report imagery (so a user can choose to send an encrypted log of a chat to FB for review).
I have a friend at whatsapp and a lot of work goes into shutting down groups sharing child abuse imagery and clever ways to detect them even though they're encrypted (sometimes you don't even need to be that clever really).
See this: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/28/us/child-sex-...
It's possible to see this as an enormous societal problem that deserves attention, and think that an encryption ban is still a bad idea for all the reasons technical people think it is. Like most things, the policy argument here is nuanced. Just because banning encryption is the wrong thing to do does not mean that the child abuse imagery concern is false or misplaced.
I think the argument in favor of encryption becomes stronger when conceding the severity of the child abuse imagery issue. Dismissing it out of hand is simplistic.