At the Summit on European Digital Sovereignty, held in Berlin on Tuesday 18 November, the French and Germans united in their call for Europe to adopt legislation and practices designed to propel it to the forefront of digital innovation.
According to European officials, the EU must strive to lead the race in artificial intelligence (AI), develop its own secure ‘cloud’ offering, tackle the abuses of online platforms and, more broadly, reduce its dependence on the technology giant that is the US.
“Europe’s objective is very simple: we want to be at the forefront of AI and cutting-edge technologies, not lagging behind”, said Henna Virkkunen, the Commissioner for Technological Sovereignty, at the opening of the event. “We have the market, we have the talent, we have the ambition. We now need to invest, innovate and adopt these technologies on a large scale”.
France has followed Germany’s lead in calling for a 12-month delay in implementing the obligations of the AI Act concerning high-risk systems (see EUROPE 13728/3).
On the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and data protection in the broad sense, Paris and Berlin want to see the Commission continue on its path of simplification and “define extremely strict protection standards for the most sensitive data, including adequate standards to protect data against cybersecurity risks, in particular the effects of extraterritorial legislation adopted outside the EU”.
The European Commission is due to present its Digital Simplification Package (see EUROPE 13747/1) on Wednesday 19 November, which will make adjustments to the GDPR (see EUROPE 13552/13), the AI Act and other data-related legislation.
French President, Emmanuel Macron, has also called for “European preference”, particularly in public procurement, deploring an “occasional fascination with non-European solutions”.
France and Germany have also announced the setting up of a working group on digital sovereignty, which is to devise sovereignty “indicators”.
See the press release (in French): https://aeur.eu/f/ji9
See the non-paper on European digital legislation (in French): https://aeur.eu/f/jia (Original version in French by Isalia Stieffatre)