EU AI Act soon in force – global cooperation needed

The EU AI will soon be in force – we await publication in the Official Journal in early June. The Act is groundbreaking and, as Professor Graham Greenleaf writes, will also affect businesses and governments located outside the EU. Elsewhere, Brazil has an advanced draft. What is needed now is regulatory interoperability. Apart from the EU, there are many active players; G7 and G20, UNESCO, United Nations, OECD and Council of Europe to name a few.

While the EU GDPR and the EU AI Act are complementary, it may be that lessons can be learned to some extent from the GDPR ‘failures’ – one of them being enforcement challenges. The EU GDPR procedural rules regulation, aimed at improving enforcement in cross-border cases, is making progress. Speaking at the CPDP conference in Brussels on 23 May, Karolina Mojzesowicz, Deputy Head of Unit Data Protection, EU Commission, said that the Council is currently forming its position and the Belgian presidency is committed to adopting a general approach soon.

The UK GDPR reform on the other hand is dead for now as the country prepares for a general election on 4 July. If the Labour party wins, as is expected, there may well be an AI Bill. But it has not announced whether it will revive the Conservative government’s Data Protection and Digital Information Bill.

The European Data Protection Board (EDPB) has issued its Opinion on ‘pay or consent’ but France’s previous stance is somewhat different. The EDPB, the UK ICO and DPAs from other “adequate” jurisdictions met recently to discuss adequacy and data transfers. The pool of adequate countries is still very small. Canada’s renewed adequacy is discussed in this issue by Professor Emeritus Colin J. Bennett who aptly states that “Canada’s privacy protection regime passes, but the exam is still on”.

PL&B’s 37th Annual Conference, 1-3 July, will feature 30 sessions including one with Commissioners from Canada, Germany and the UK discussing regulatory cooperation.

Laura Linkomies
Editor, Privacy Laws & Business

June 2024