Brando Benifei (S&D, Italian), the European Parliament’s co-rapporteur on the legislative proposal on artificial intelligence (‘AI Act’), stressed the importance of personal data protection at the IAPP Europe Congress on Wednesday 15 November.
Parliament will not compromise on fundamental rights and privacy aspects in the current negotiations with the Council of the EU, he stressed. “We want an agreement, we feel the urgency. We can decide not to decide on every aspect, but we cannot agree to support State surveillance models”, he added.
The co-rapporteur also indicated that the EU co-legislators were “very close” to reaching agreement on a number of aspects, including the classification of high-risk systems.
Other points, however, are still the subject of fierce debate, such as implementation, prohibited practices, exemptions for law enforcement agencies, provisions that could come into effect before the text comes fully into force, and the thorny issues of generative AI and foundation models.
“Today, the foundation models are part of the text. The situation could perhaps be unblocked by not putting it in the text, by putting it in the hands of the future Council for AI, and by implementing acts. But delegating is not the desired scenario”, he declared.
The question of foundation models continues to occupy a place of central importance. As well as dividing the co-legislators, fault lines have also emerged within the Member States. At the end of last week, several Member States, including France and Germany, opposed the Spanish Presidency of the EU Council’s tiered approach, which proposed opting for the creation of stricter criteria and rules for ‘high-impact’ foundation models (see EUROPE 13279/18).
For these Member States, AI legislation should instead be based on an approach focusing on the level of risk posed by AI systems rather than on the AI foundation models themselves.
The issue will be discussed by the EU Council’s Working Party on Telecommunications on Friday 17 November.
Several rounds of technical discussions between the EU Council and Parliament will take place between now and 6 December, the date of the next interinstitutional trilogue (see EUROPE 13283/22). (Original version in French by Thomas Mangin)