Debate: Digital future of Europe: digital single market and use of AI for European consumers
Date: WEDNESDAY, 19 MAY 2021
Speaker: Deirdre Clune
Country: France
Language: EN

The last 12 months and more have demonstrated to us the value of digitalisation and how it can contribute to bringing people together, to connecting businesses to consumers and connecting business to business. But we can do more to make our single market work better for citizens and businesses, make European SMEs, micro-businesses and larger companies more competitive, and improve their potential to compete globally.  As always, we need to remove unnecessary and unjustified barriers that occur at national level and emphasise the need for a strong European approach that gives certainty to enterprise. European companies should engage with an EU approach to regulation and not have to engage with 27 Member State approaches. This certainty will encourage entrepreneurs and others who want to expand and establish themselves in the European Union, as they will know that the EU is a place where they can do this. They know for sure what’s expected of them. There will be no barriers, no borders, just a market of 450 million citizens and the support of European regulation that provides legal clarity. European regulation that is trustworthy, fully compliant with fundamental rights, consumer protection rules, data protection rules and is non-discriminatory. These are the traits Europe has established for itself and as a leader worldwide, and the traits we also want to embed in our digital rules. Of course, this approach is always essential for our public services that support our citizens, regardless of where they reside. As we continue to deal with COVID and the fallout from the pandemic, as we face our ambition of implementing the EU Green Deal, and as we reorganise our healthcare services, digitalisation and emerging technologies such as AI can and will contribute to reaching these objectives. It is really encouraging to see that 25% of the EU rescue fund is going to be earmarked for digital and we must not waiver from that. Funding for SMEs, innovation and tech entrepreneurs is vital if we are to facilitate the development of the EU tech space that we so badly need.  If we look at our global competitors in the AI sector, like the United States or China, we can see that more private sector investment is encouraged there than it is here in the European Union. Yes, we have our InvestEU, our Horizon EU and other programmes, and these are enormously successful, but we must also introduce policies that leverage private sector investment in terms of venture capital or seed capital.  We need that private sector investment to ensure that we don’t have scale-ups for sale here in Europe, and we don’t have start-ups that will scale up in third countries. We want EU successes. I really welcome the Commissioner’s recent proposals to support artificial intelligence through regulation, proposals designed to encourage its use and, importantly, to encourage consumer confidence. AI has enormous potential to address many of the challenges that we face today in the healthcare sector, agriculture and transport, and in developing our smart cities. The list is endless and it does go on, but AI is not without its drawbacks or its risks, such as lack of transparency or traceability, or lack of human oversight, bias decision-making, etc. These need to be addressed through regulation.  We already have our data protection rules, privacy rules, non-discrimination rules, but we need to protect consumers as we do with product safety and liability. We need the same protection online as offline, but there are gaps and these need to be addressed. We need to inform consumers on the use of artificial intelligence, where it is being used and when they are engaging with it. Consumers have a right to be adequately informed in a timely and easily accessible manner where AI exists and the possible outcomes, how the system is established, is checked, how it can be contested and how it can be corrected. This is a very important position that we have reflected in our report today, because we believe that these criteria are essential if we want to encourage consumer confidence, and they will in turn feed into an ecosystem that allows AI products and technologies to develop. There are risks with artificial intelligence; I don’t deny that. In some areas of operation, the risks will be higher than in others. And we want to see a risk-based regulatory approach that would regulate the highest risk and, as consequence, for lower risks we would have less regulation.  There must be the possibility to also prohibit harmful or discriminatory practice. We don’t want to see a binary approach to risk evaluation that could become quickly obsolete, but rather a forward-looking approach that is not application-specific but that gives certainty to developers, certainty to investors and indeed confidence to consumers. So artificial intelligence and the future regulation that we are going to be dealing with in this House are important. It will send out a message that Europe can be a leader in this area, as we were with the General Data Protection Regulation. There are gaps. I think it’s another ideal opportunity to lead internally but also to lead on a global basis in terms of how we can deal with AI and boost confidence, both for consumers and for business.