European data protection law is less than ten years old and is already in danger of extinction. A leak has revealed that the European Commission has been preparing a “digital simplification package” for weeks to soften the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and delay key parts of the AI law. It will come in the form of a omnibus law, an accelerated legislative package that brings together multiple legal changes and is processed through a special procedure that reduces or eliminates common steps in the European legislative process. Its main function is to approve changes quickly, without the full control that a normal reform should have.
THE omnibus law It is a big surprise: it allows profound changes to be labeled as simple – reducing the usual revision steps –, it avoids extensive public consultations, the impact assessment can be skipped and it limits the intervention of internal legal services, shortening the time of debate both in the European Parliament and in the Council. The main argument is that Europe lags behind the United States and China in developing the key technologies of our time because its regulation is too rigid, too utopian and blocks the emergence of competitive projects and companies that fail under the Union’s restrictions. Which is to say that the abolition of slavery stopped the great pharaonic projects: technically true, and democratically absurd.
The reform is led by Ursula von der Leyen, who sees the United States as “one of the EU’s closest partners”. He is protected by the famous Draghi Reportin which the former Italian prime minister argues that the application of the GDPR penalizes European companies, raising the “cost of data” compared to the freedom of their American competitors. Draghi argued that lack of access to the kind of big data that is the main fuel for generative AI models is not the only obstacle to a competitive European industry. Companies are forced to invest a lot of resources in understanding and complying with the rules instead of focusing on growth or developing technologies. The project proposes to give up the special protection that European citizens have enjoyed until now. According to NOYB, the European privacy protection organization founded in 2017 by Austrian activist Max Schrems, the draft would mainly favor large platforms such as Google, Meta, Amazon and OpenAI.
“The proposal is not only extreme, but also very poorly drafted,” Schrems said. “It doesn’t help small businesses, as promised, but again it primarily benefits small businesses great technologyThe main change would be a redefinition of the concept of “personal data,” loosening key protections to provide greater flexibility in the extraction and use of data – including personal, medical and biometric data – for the development and training of indigenous AI models. As regards the law on digital services, it is proposed to postpone stricter rules on “high-risk” uses until 2027. Ironically, the move is reminiscent of the European Commission’s own elaborate attempts to enforce the excesses of intellectual property law in the days of Napster. We will soon see whether the EU will be aligned with citizens’ rights or with corporate interests. great technology.
