The European Ministers for the Economy and Financial Affairs, meeting at the ‘Economic and Financial Affairs’ Council on Tuesday 5 November, adopted a set of conclusions on Europe’s ambitions for artificial intelligence (AI), which had already been approved in mid-October by the Member States’ ambassadors to the EU (see EUROPE 13506/10).
This document responds to the European Court of Auditors’ damning report on the EU’s shortcomings in AI governance (see EUROPE 13419/8).
To remedy this, the Member States want to strengthen and improve governance and ensure “increased, more focused investment to make progress in this area”.
The Council agreed with the auditors’ conclusions: “the EU has to scale up investments in AI and facilitate access to digital infrastructure, in order to be a globally competitive actor with a global impact”.
In the conclusions, the Member States consider it “necessary” to increase European investment in AI.
They also call for “strengthened synergy and consolidation among existing [research and investment] funding programmes” and a review of “the investment targets defined in 2018”, which “can no longer serve as a benchmark”.
To this end, they call for “a revision of the Coordinated Plan on AI (2021) to ensure alignment with the latest technological developments and regulatory frameworks” and urge the Commission to re-examine “existing key performance indicators”, with a view to assessing the need for indicators specific to the development of AI.
To see the conclusions, go to https://aeur.eu/f/dxj (Original version in French by Isalia Stieffatre)