The plans of the Irish #Presidency, supported by #Germany and the European #Commission, to in practice exempt the collection and processing of #personaldata for #AI related purposes largely from the discipline of #GDPR are not in line with the #Charter of Fundamental Rights nor the #Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. In a time where #Artificial Intelligence is already as ambient as electricity, the changes on the table in the Council amount to an illegal change of primary law, namely of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European and of the Charter of Fundamental Rights, both of which guarantee the protection of personal data, through an act of secondary law in the form of amendments to GDPR. It is likely that thus the Court of Justice would annul such secondary law #GDPR amendments, as they factually exempt AI from the guarantees provided in Treaties and render them largely meaningless in a world in which AI is already all over the place. At a time when California has strengthened it's law on AI and privacy, and even in Washington the discussion on third party controls and protections against AI risks and overrrach are taking off, the path pushed by the Irish Presidency and some others is anachronistic. Emptying GDPR from it's relevance for AI would add further damage to the cardinal sinn of the AI Act, which does not forsee any new ex ante third party controls on AI and thus provides a lower level of protection of public interests and individuals than is provided through legal requirements such as ex ante building permits in construction or ex ante type appproval for new Car designs. The future of AI in Europe is not secured by continued exceptionalism for AI but on the contrary by starting to apply normal principles of law and protection of public interest to AI as they have been applied to other technologies, from atomic power to pharmaceuticals and chemicals, for ages. Rather than the weakening of the rules, the age of AI and it's hyperpersonalised agents of the future require stronger personal data protection rules, as Tim Cook of Apple said, and the risks of AI as we see them unfolding require ex ante controlls. The Commission and the Council should now see the signs of the times and turn around to pursue a course of strengthening rather than weakening protections.#EU #Omnibus #DSGVO #KI #Dataprotection #Privacy #Datenschutz

This year IPPR is expanding its presence and will be at five party conferences in 2026. We anticipate that just as in previous years, our events will prove