The threat of Member States blocking the text on artificial intelligence lessened considerably on Tuesday 30 January after the German Minister for Digital Affairs, Volker Wissing, announced that Berlin would support the agreement reached by the European Parliament and the Council of the EU on 8 December (see EUROPE 13311/17).
“The wrangling over Germany’s position on the AI Act ended today with an acceptable compromise”, he said. He added: “The negotiated compromise lays the foundations for the development of trustworthy AI”.
Berlin’s support for the text at the vote of the Member States’ representatives to the EU, which will take place on Friday 2 February (see EUROPE 13339/36), was also made possible by the fact that the German Liberal Democrat Party (FDP) - a member of the coalition and which had been arguing in favour of easing the requirements under the ‘AI Act’ - dropped its objections. However, Mr Wissing said he had achieved improvements for small and medium-sized enterprises.
In mid-January, several Member States expressed the view that ‘inconsistencies’ could lead to legal uncertainty. Over and above this issue, Paris and Berlin, fearing that their national champions in the AI sector would suffer if the rules were deemed too strict, had also expressed their desire to return to the question of general-purpose AI systems (see EUROPE 13337/11). (Original version in French by Thomas Mangin)