In her written answers to questions from European Parliament committees, published on Wednesday 23 October, Finland’s Henna Virkkunen, Commissioner-designate for Technological Sovereignty, Security and Democracy, gives a glimpse of her plans for artificial intelligence, the regulation of tech giants and the future of European telecommunications.
Europe as an “AI continent”. The former MEP considers the major challenges facing her portfolio, with a particular focus on the development of AI. The first hundred days of her term will be devoted to putting in place an “AI Factories Act”, alongside an “AI and Cloud Development Act”.
Together, these two initiatives would help EU businesses to develop and deploy artificial intelligence more easily, by increasing investment, making access to high-performance computers more accessible and setting targets for energy efficiency.
As data and its storage is an issue linked to the development of AI, Henna Virkkunen states that she wants to work on the security of cloud computing by proposing “a common data security framework”.
The new Commissioner’s mission statement already hinted at the European Commission’s plans for future work on AI (see EUROPE 13484/4). According to Mario Draghi’s report on EU competitiveness, Europe is particularly far behind in the development and deployment of this technology.
Implementation of DSA and DMA. With regard to the flagship regulations of the last legislature, the Commissioner-designate undertakes to continue to implement them and to capitalise on their initial results.
With regard to the Digital Services Act (DSA), Ms Virkkunen lists four main points: “1) protection of minors online; 2) e-commerce and non-compliant goods on online marketplaces; 3) illegal content online, including algorithmic amplification of such content; and 4) the wider issue of information integrity in the context of elections”.
As for the Digital Markets Act (DMA), its main objectives are “ensuring a level playing field and fair competition”, according to Ms Virkkunen.
“My approach to enforcing the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act would be rigorous, evidence-based, and determined”, she writes, not ruling out increased cooperation with the offending platforms.
“I would also work with the Commissioner for Democracy, Justice and the Rule of Law on a Digital Fairness Act, to ensure practices such as dark patterns, addictive design and online profiling are adequately tackled”, she says, referring to the Commission’s recent report on online consumer protection (see EUROPE 13497/6).
The sensitive project of overhauling telecommunications. The Commissioner-designate also details her vision of a future “Digital Network Act”, suggested by Thierry Breton last February on the occasion of the publication of the Commission’s ‘White Paper’ on the future of European telecommunications and digital infrastructure (see EUROPE 13390/2).
This initiative, currently the subject of debate, is presented as necessary, but only given certain conditions, according to the future Commissioner. Any future regulation must “incentivise the development of integrated connectivity and computing infrastructures and ensure a level playing field [while] taking into account stakeholders’ feedback on the Commission´s White Paper”.
In a sign of the overlapping portfolios in this new Commission, Ms Virkkunen repeatedly mentions her willingness to work on specific issues with other Commissioners, such as Stéphane Séjourné (Industrial Strategy) on e-commerce or Michael McGrath (Justice) on the fight against addictive designs.
To see the written answers, go to https://aeur.eu/f/dzu (Original version in French by Isalia Stieffatre)