At least in Sweden, almost all established parties support this legislation making it difficult for voters to vote against it without voting for fringe parties outside parliament (piratpartiet for example). Further, mainstream media hasn’t given it much attention so politicians has been able to be pro this legislation while in general being pro peoples integrity. Quite incoherent, but not challenged by anyone.

Having taken a closer look, there's nothing really nefarious going on: what is mainly happening is that every step of the very long process of passing a EU regulation is getting lots of attention.

Back in 2020 or so the commission first proposed the reform that contains the chat control provisions, then there was like a year or two of well published fighting in the European Parliament (EP) before they reached a position on the entire reform (notably excluding chat control).

Meanwhile the council of minister (effectively the upper house of the EP) didn't get around to forming an opinion before the parliament, so they are doing that now, which means it the same fight over chat control all over again but with different people.

After the council of ministers agrees on a position on the entire reform proposal from the commission we'll get even more rounds of bickering over what the final text should be: the trialogue. Those tend to be very closed, but with how much attention chat control is getting expect lots of leaks and constant news about who's being an ass during that step too.

Note that it is explicitly expected that each of the thee bodies will come up with different positions on many aspects of a regulation proposal, so there is nothing strange with the commission or the council suggesting some the parliament has opposed.

They only have to get "lucky" once, we have to get lucky every time so it makes sense if you want this to keep pushing it - once the law is passed it's much harder to revoke it later.

The people pushing it are ~bribed~ lobbied hard by groups who want this so they don't care about wasting their time or resources since they are getting paid for it.

> Is there not some career disincentive/consequence where if you try to push Encryption back doors, you get demolished in your re-election

In a somewhat ironic turn of events we don't know who was pushing it this time as they where protected by anonymity - one rule for them I guess and another for everyone else.

Gotta get the average voter to know/care more for that to happen.

That's why they do it so stealthily, most of the time encryption isn't even mentioned. What they often do is talk about the need to "protect the children" at the responsibility of the service provider, who in order to comply would have to disable encryption on their own. It would technically remain legal, only banned de jure.

Also most average people don't know anything about encryption or backdoors, not even the meaning of those words. In their minds they have nothing to be concerned or mad about.