The other part of the story is that as long as Europe continues to vote radical rights + conservatives, we are going to get more and more of this. Most greens and progressives fight this tooth and nail.
Which itself happened due to a democratic deficit regarding migration.
While most greens and progressives may be against this particular law, I rather doubt that if they introduced a progressive green law for a vote and failed to get a majority, they would immediately give up and never try to get such a law passed ever again.
And I think it's good that nobody has to give up on politics just because they lost once.
- Chat Control gets pushed by lobbyists, who have far more/better access to politicians than citizens. It is true that there are also some non-profits lobbying in this case, but the surveillance economy companies that are pushing this behind the scene have very deep pockets and very deep access.
- Chat Control gets pushed over and over again by the EC, which is the least accountable/democratic between the Parliament, Council, and Commission.
If you look outside the EU, there are enough examples of governments that are democratically elected, but are in practice not accountable to citizens because they are in the pockets of large companies that funded their campaigns, etc.
Depending on the target audience, public actors can even avoid disclosing their actions in existing transparency registries. Technically it is very elegant.