AI Act: Numeum/Bitkom joint letter for trialogue

The AI Act has a role to play in helping companies bring trusted AI solutions to market. The AI Act is a complex legislative proposal, creating a new framework at the intersection of traditional ICT product compliance and fundamental rights protection.

The work undertaken by the Council of the EU and the European Parliament has helped to increase legal certainty for businesses. However, some challenges remain. Numeum and its German counterpart Bitkom have joined forces to stress once again the importance of striking the right regulatory balance.

We therefore encourage the Council and the European Parliament, in the context of the forthcoming trialogue negotiations, to take the following points into consideration:

The AI Regulation establishes significant safeguards for fundamental rights, public health and safety to protect consumers and encourage technology adoption. At the same time, we call on the co-legislators to maintain the risk-based approach to ensure that the European Union strengthens the competitiveness and innovation potential of the European AI ecosystem in line with our European values and the principle of digital sovereignty. To this end, we would like to highlight our concerns regarding 1) the classification of high-risk AI systems, 2) the assessment of the risk to fundamental rights, and 3) the role of general-purpose AI systems.