France's interior minister has claimed that encryption technology in messaging apps is widely used by terrorists and said the country would work with Germany to initially launch a European initiative to "deal with" the issue.

"This is a central issue in the fight against terrorism, many of the messages exchanged with a view to carrying out terrorist attacks are now encrypted," said Bernard Cazeneuve, reported by Le Monde.

Cazeneuve made the announcement on Thursday, but refused to provide any details about what such an initiative might include. When asked whether Internet companies might be required to decrypt communications made with their encrypted services, he replied: "France will make proposals, I have sent a number [of them] to my German counterpart."

According to French site Next Inpact, Cazeneuve said he hoped the initiative would become a global one. He was quoted as saying:

I will receive my German counterpart, Thomas de Maizière, on August 23, so that we can launch a European initiative to prepare a more international initiative. It is one of the issues in combating terrorism that is absolutely crucial and one on which we must be in a position to move forward and make progress together.

As Ars reported earlier this year, France's digital affairs deputy minister Axelle Lemaire rejected an amendment to a new "Law for the Digital Republic," which called for tech companies to provide backdoors to encrypted systems. It is not clear whether the French government has changed its mind on this approach. Ars sought more information on the plans from the French embassy in London, but hadn't received a response at time of publication.

If the French government does now want backdoors added, it will be against the advice of its own National Agency for Information System Security. In a letter published by French newspaper Libération, the agency's director general Guillaume Poupard warned the government against demanding crypto backdoors. As Next Inpact reported, he said this would have a "disastrous effect" on computer security.

His view is supported by other important voices. In March, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said that "weakening encryption protections may bring even bigger dangers to national and international security.”

More recently, the European Data Protection Supervisor, Giovanni Buttarelli, said users should be allowed to use "end-to-end encryption (without 'backdoors') to protect their electronic communications."