Invited to Princeton University on Tuesday 9 April, as part of an annual conference on public policy, the Executive Vice-President of the European Commission, Margrethe Vestager, gave a speech reviewing European advances in digital legislation.
Taking the figure of Robert Oppenheimer as her starting point, the Executive Vice-President developed the idea that “some technologies do not simply add something new to the world. They change it completely”.
In her view, the EU is well on the way to answering the main challenges posed by the emergence of the new technologies of the 21st century, thanks to its regulatory policy.
“We need to bring down the old cliché that regulation goes against innovation. Quite the opposite. Laws exist to mitigate the risks, and open-up markets that have been closed down”, she stressed. And she took as an example the recent advances in legislation on digital services (DSA) and the digital markets (DMA) as well as the investigations opened against the major platforms to regulate their monopoly position (see EUROPE 13378/8).
On the subject of artificial intelligence, Margrethe Vestager pointed out that the EU was the first to adopt a regulatory framework and is now being taken as an example by other global players.
The Commissioner also reiterated the importance of cooperation between the EU and the USA, which is all the more necessary as both parties have a great deal of regulatory power in their hands. (Original version in French by Isalia Stieffatre)