Dear EU leaders,
There is no "reasonable middle ground" in this issue. Either the encryption works, and it protects the conversation, or it doesn't and it can be broken by both state and private actors, foreign or domestic. It is not like other policies in the phisical world, where a compromise on guns, drugs etc. can be reached that maximize the social welfare. The mathematics of encryption do not allow partial privacy, you either have it, or you don't and when you do, no government can break it.
It follows that any "reasonable balance" in practice alwas means a de facto ban of encryption technology, and replacing it with a state monopoly on encryption. Thus, citizens could pe provided with simulated encryption tools, where messages are securely sent to infrastructure controlled by the government, stored, then resent securely to the intended recipient, with the state or their intermediaries controlling the privacy of the conversations. This conceptual copying need not be done for every encrypted exchange, the key issue being the existence of a backdoor that could be activated at the decision of the state.
This is undesirable for many reasons:
1. It is insecure and dangerous; once a backdoor exists, its activation must be unknowable by the citizens, otherwise it makes no sense as it would tip off the criminals. If activation of the backdoor is unknowable, then there can exist no guarantees it's only used for legitimate purposes. The backdoor would be of a mathematical and technical nature while the institutions called to regulate it would be no better than other institutions humans create: they could be corruptible, incompetent, tyrannical etc. The mathematics of encryption backdoors would serve such institutions well regardless of their dedication to the goal of providing only lawful access, and would serve any 3rd party that could abuse it. Furthermore, lawful intereption points constitute a central point of attack for a powerful adversary, even to the point of weakening national security.
2. It is essentially useless. Smart criminals use off-the-shelf technology because they know it's fit for purpose. If government snooping is implemented in all such products, then they would switch to other forms of communications that can provide them with the secrecy they require to operate. Additionally, encryption is just math, and the fundamental capability of computers that surround us is to perform math and load user-defined programs. Encryption can never be banned, just commercial products that use it. Criminals don't care about such bans and would revert to older implementations or write their own ilegal encryption tools.
3. It disempowers citizens. The ability to have private communication unperturbed by the power of the state is a fundamental freedom in a democratic country. It is a modern manifestation of a timeless pact between the governed and the rulers: government exists to protect the liberty of ruled, not protect itself. People are to be trusted because their freedom is an end in itself, and the technology of encryption is vastly liberty enhancing without being, by itself, a direct threat to anyone.