I see this as contradictory to data protection legislation, which goes to absurd lengths. Now they are coming up with another absurdity, a big brother of communications for a supposedly good cause, of course, and which will not be used to stop criminals, who will move to other, more secure forms of communication, but for total control of the population. There has already been a first proposal for legislation on this which was defeated, and hopefully will be again.
Ironically, I could see criminals learning how to use PGP and other asymmetric cryptography tools for them to continue to operate far away from the radar of authorities, while the common population would feel those tools not to be easy to use, in the end, I agree with you, it is not about stopping criminals, otherwise, the authorities would not treat all of us as criminals and put on the table these laws which are dragonian and argueagly, against the human rigths of all of us.
This is an issue which I would consider to be more serious than the neutrality of the internet, by the way... which was restored, If I recall correctly.