Only machinery will be exempt after a successful last-ditch effort by Germany to secure a lighter regulatory regime for industrial AI applications.
Dutch liberal lawmaker Bart Groothuis expressed skepticism about the deal at POLITICO’s AI & Tech Week and said he still had to look into whether to vote in favor when it is put to the European Parliament for formal approval.
“We need to deregulate much, much faster than we are doing now,” Groothuis told POLITICO.
Groothuis said European AI companies tell him they can’t build a European model capable of challenging industry leaders such as ChatGPT under the current legislation, and that the deal agreed Thursday will not change that.
Center-right lawmakers who were in the negotiating room also said they wanted more: “I’m not that happy that the member states were not [as] ambitious as we were,” Swedish conservative lawmaker Arba Kokalari told reporters Thursday, referring to the fact that EU countries had only greenlit an exemption for machinery and not for other sectors.
German liberal European Parliament lawmaker Svenja Hahn blamed EU countries’ lack of ambition. “We wanted this solution for more sectors to boost AI made in Europe even more, but that was unfortunately not possible with the member states,” she said in a statement shared by the liberal Renew group.