12 Dec 2023
Council and EP reach agreement on Artificial Intelligence Act
On 8 December 2023, the European Parliament and the Council of the EU reached a political deal on the Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act). This regulation aims to ensure that fundamental rights, democracy, the rule of law and environmental sustainability are protected from high risk AI, while boosting innovation and making Europe a leader in the field. The rules establish obligations for AI based on its potential risks and level of impact. The European Commission has welcomed the agreement which is based on a Commission proposal of April 2021.
Recognising the potential threat to citizens’ rights and democracy posed by certain applications of AI, the co-legislators agreed to prohibit:
- biometric categorisation systems that use sensitive characteristics (e.g. political, religious, philosophical beliefs, sexual orientation, race);
- untargeted scraping of facial images from the internet or CCTV footage to create facial recognition databases;
- emotion recognition in the workplace and educational institutions;
- social scoring based on social behaviour or personal characteristics;
- AI systems that manipulate human behaviour to circumvent their free will;
- AI used to exploit the vulnerabilities of people (due to their age, disability, social or economic situation).
The AI Act text includes several law enforcement exemptions, obligations for high-risk systems, guardrails for general AI systems, transparency and protections of fundamental rights, and measures to support innovation and SMEs. Non-compliance with the rules can lead to fines ranging from 35 million euro or 7% of global turnover to 7.5 million or 1.5 % of turnover, depending on the infringement and size of the company.
The provisional agreement provides that the AI act should apply two years after its entry into force, with some exceptions for specific provisions. The entire text will need to be confirmed by both the Council and the EP institutions and undergo legal-linguistic revision before formal adoption by the co-legislators, to become EU law. Parliament’s Internal Market and Civil Liberties committees will vote on the agreement in a forthcoming meeting.
For more information: