Incoming tech Commissioner wants EU to become 'AI continent'

Europe should become the 'AI continent', Henna Virkkunen, European Commissioner-designate for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy, said in written answers to questions from lawmakers ahead of her confirmation hearing next month.

Finland’s Virkkunen, herself a former EU lawmaker, promised to propose an AI Factories Initiative to the Parliament, aimed at giving start-ups access to high performance computers, within 100 days of taking office.

In addition, a Cloud and AI Development Act should help EU companies develop and deploy AI easier through more investment and energy efficiency targets.

She added that she will work on security, the cloud and data storage, without excluding non-EU providers.

“It is important to remain open to third-country providers, ensuring our supply chain security, while also accounting for the legitimate interest for 'sovereign cloud' solutions in particularly sensitive applications. Thanks to the Data Act’s shielding provisions, we have ensured that the data stored in Europe by cloud service providers remain safe from illegitimate access or transfers by non-EU governments, but we must do more for more sensitive applications,” Virkkunen wrote.

In addition, an Apply AI Strategy should help deploy new machine learning tools across industries and the public sector, according to the commissioner-designate's pledges.

The plans come on the heels of the previous European Commission proposing the world’s first regulation on AI, according to a risk-based and human-centric approach.  Virkkunen’s mission letter sent by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen already hinted at the EU executive’s plans for future work on AI. So far the EU has been falling behind on development and deployment of the technology.

Virkkunen will work closely with the incoming commissioner for Startups, Research and Innovation, Bulgaria’s Ekaterina Zaharieva, who will set up a European AI Research Council. And with others including Austria’s incoming Commissioner for Home Affairs and Migration Magnus Brunner, on using the technologies for border surveillance.

Child protection

Child protection is another priority area for the next Commission. Virkkunen said she will work on guidelines on the protection of minors under the Digital Services Act (DSA), to be ready by mid-2025, and look at the introduction of a privacy-preserving age verification system.

Other commissioners working on this topic are Brunner and Ireland’s Michael McGrath Commissioner for Democracy, Justice and Rule of Law.

Brunner said one of his priorities will be to get the proposed rules to prevent and combat child sexual abuse online (CSAM), put forward by the Commission in 2022, adopted.

Negotiations on a deal have been stuck between member states for a while: they disagree on how much the solution might undermine end-to-end encryption — a technology where only the sender and the receiver can read the messages.

“I believe we can and should find a viable way to finalize the negotiations on the pending Regulation for it to come into application in time before the interim Regulation expires,” Brunner said.

In his work on the Digital Fairness Act (DFA), aimed to strengthen consumers’ rights online, McGrath said he will pay special attention to the protection of minors as “active users of digital services".

He called the DFA “the missing piece of the puzzle in the EU’s digital rulebook,” planning to look into four core issues: dark patterns, influencer marketing, addictive design and problematic personalization.

McGrath said he aimed to improve the enforcement of consumer law, not only in the EU but also across borders.

“I will also seek to further improve the enforcement cooperation system for national authorities who will continue to enforce most widespread breaches of EU consumer law, while also focusing efforts on strengthening our ability to effectively enforce EU rules against large multinationals that target our consumers from outside of the EU.”

He said his action would build on existing laws including the DSA, the Digital Markets Act, the AI Act and the General Data Protection Regulation.