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The EU has developed a comprehensive set of digital regulations to govern the data, digital services and technologies used in the member states. The rules aim to ensure that digital transformation is safe, fair and beneficial for citizens, as well as supporting innovation and a competitive market. These regulations establish a common legal framework in such areas as online platforms and AIs, cybersecurity and digital identity; they also ensure protection of individual rights and control over personal data in line with the harmonised EU rules.
Background: five pillars
The EU has already set the global standards for digital governance through a comprehensive rulebook designed to protect fundamental rights, promote fair competition and ensure cybersecurity. These foundational laws span five primary pillars, holding digital operators to strict compliance regarding data, AI, digital markets and security.
1. Data privacy and governance. It is mainly, the General Data Protection Regulation, GDPR as the cornerstone of European “digital privacy”. It governs the processing and free movement of personal data, and granting individuals strict control over their digital footprint (most EU states are having national data protection agencies. Then, the EU Data Act: i.e. it unlocks the digital economy by regulating data sharing, boosting access to IoT-generated data and facilitating seamless cloud-switching to prevent vendor lock-in.
2. Artificial Intelligence: the EU AI Act, which is the world’s first comprehensive legal framework on AI. It classifies AI systems by risk (unacceptable, high and limited) and bans harmful practices like emotion recognition in the workplace and social scoring.
3. Online Platforms and Digital Markets: the Digital Services Act, DSA focusing on platform accountability, requiring strict measures to track and remove illegal content online; e.g. Very Large Online Platforms, VLOPs face rigorous audits and transparency requirements. Then, there is the Digital Markets Act, DMA which aims to ensure fair and contestable markets by preventing “gatekeeper” technology giants (e.g., Apple, Google, etc.) from imposing unfair conditions on businesses and consumers.
4. Cybersecurity and Operational Resilience; the NIS2 Directive enhances the overall level of cybersecurity across the EU member states; it imposes stringent risk-management and incident-reporting requirements on entities operating in critical sectors, ensuring swift cross-border cooperation. Then, the Digital Operational Resilience Act, DORA: it mandates uniform security rules for financial entities to ensure they can withstand, respond to and recover from all types of ICT-related disruptions and threats.
5. Digital Identity and Contracts. The eIDAS 2.0 Regulation mandates that the EU member states provide citizens and businesses with secure and interoperable EU-wide Digital Identity Wallets. This allows seamless, cross-border digital identification and trusted electronic services. The EU’s Digital Content Directive standardizes continental rules across the EU regarding the supply of digital content and services, bringing legal certainty and enhancing consumer protection in the cross-border online trade.
Source and citations from: https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/eu-digital-regulations
AI Scientific Panel
The European Commission has established the Scientific Panel as an expert advisory body (according to art. 68 of the AI Act) to support the implementation and enforcement of the AI legislation. Thus, 60 world-class independent AI experts (mainly from EU-27, as well as the US, the UK, Egypt and Ukraine, have been appointed to advise the AI Office and national authorities on implementation and assessment of the impacts and risks of General-Purpose AI (GPAI) models.
Their core responsibilities include alerting the AI Office to systemic risks, advising on GPAI classification and evaluation methodologies and supporting market surveillance activities, a role that complements the broader stakeholder input provided by the AI Advisory Forum.
The selected experts span fields such as GPAI capability evaluation, risk assessment, technical mitigations, misuse and cyber offence risks, provider cybersecurity and compute measurement. Appointed in their personal capacity for a renewable two-year term, they were chosen with attention to geographic and gender balance, with a chair and vice-chair to be elected.
On Scientific Panel in: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/ai-scientific-panel
AI Advisory Forum
Alongside the Scientific Panel, the European Commission has established the Advisory Forum (also according to the art. 67 of the AI Act) as a general advisory body to the Commission and the AI Board, in supporting the implementation and enforcement of the AI legislation.
Selected from more than 700 applications, the 174 members are drawn from civil society, academia and industry, including SMEs and start-ups; they will provide technical expertise on a broad range of matters, such as AI standardisation and implementation challenges.
Serving two-year terms that are renewable once, the forum’s members are expected to engage actively in plenary meetings and thematic subgroups and to offer opinions, recommendations and written contributions at the request of the AI Board or the Commission.
Among permanent members are: the Fundamental Rights Agency, ENISA, CEN, CENELEC and ETSI, with the AI Office able to invite further stakeholders as observers.
More in: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/ai-advisory-forum
Code of Practice
Commission publishes Code of Practice on marking and labelling the AI-generated content. The European Commission has published the final Code of Practice as a voluntary instrument that sets out practical steps to help providers and deployers of generative AI systems meet the AI Act’s transparency obligations applying from 2 August 2026.
Thus, Deepfakes and AI-generated or AI-manipulated text published on matters of public interest must be clearly marked, while users must also be informed when they are interacting with an interactive AI system such as a chatbot.
The Code was drafted by six independent experts with input from more than 180 stakeholders, ranging from providers and deployers to SMEs, academia, the public sector and civil society. It is organised into two sections: – one addressing how providers should mark generated or manipulated content in a machine-readable way; and another – explaining how deployers must label deepfakes and public-interest text produced without human review.
Complementing the rules on general-purpose AI and high-risk systems, the Code is now open for signatures and will be accompanied by Commission guidelines clarifying the scope of the obligations.
Source: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_26_1328
Digital issues in the Ireland Council’s Presidency
During the second part of 2026, the rotating presidency in the Council of the European Union is held by Ireland; following Ireland’s term, Lithuania will assume the presidency in the first half of 2027. Among the Ireland’s priorities is the AI Omnibus and child safety; the government’s policy program (68-page document) published by Helen McEntee, Ireland’s minister for foreign affairs, ahead of the country’s rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union, includes three themes – competitiveness, values and security; they all signals an intention to aggressively roll back parts of the EU’s digital regulatory framework during the six-month term beginning 1 July, while also advancing measures on child online safety, justice and migration.
In pursuing the EU’s “simplification agenda”, the program adopts the framing that “simplification is about better regulation, not deregulation”, thereby acknowledging concerns from the EU-wide civil society and some member states. For Ireland, the most immediate task is the Digital Omnibus on AI, a package of amendments to the AI Act; although the Parliament and Council reached a provisional agreement in May, it has not yet been formally adopted. Without approval, the original high-risk compliance deadline of 2 August 2026 remains, whereas the Omnibus would push it back to December 2027 at the earliest and loosen protections around personal data use.
Main reference to: https://artificialintelligenceact.substack.com/p/the-eu-ai-act-newsletter-104-experts?publication_id=743591&post_id=202103366&isFreemail=true&r=51x17r&triedRedirect=true
European AI Board
On 11 June 2026, the AI Board met under the chairmanship of the Cypriot Presidency of the EU Council to discuss and review the current priorities for implementing the EU AI Policy.
Among the issues discussed were the following:
a) The Tech Sovereignty Package. The Commission presented the Tech Sovereignty package, adopted to ensure EU’s tech sovereignty and competitiveness in the current geoeconomic landscape, focusing in particular on the Cloud and AI Development Act and its role in strengthening AI innovation in Europe.
b) Latest EU AI policy developments. The chairs and vice-chairs of the working groups involved in the drafting process of the Code of Practice on labelling and marking of AI-generated content have presented its final version. This code is voluntary and sets out practical steps to help providers and deployers of generative AI systems meet the AI Act transparency obligations that will apply from 2 August 2026.
The European Commission presented to the AI Board the recently appointed Scientific Panel and AI Act Advisory Forum, which will support the Commission and the AI Board in the implementation of the AI Act.
The AI Board also discussed other updates related to the AI Act’s implementation. During the meeting, the AI Board also discussed the progress in the set of national market surveillance authorities. Finally, AI Board members discussed and endorsed documents prepared by the AI Board’s subgroup, which will be published shortly.
Source: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/ai-board-convenes-its-eighth-meeting
External opinion on EU AIs
The Future of Life Institute published recently a brief biweekly paper called “the EU AI Act Newsletter”, which provided an up-to-date developments and analyses of the EU artificial intelligence legislation.
An open letter calling for the prohibition of the development of superintelligent AI was announced in October 2025, signed by more than 700 celebrities, AI scientists, faith leaders and policymakers. Among the signatories are five Nobel laureates; two so-called “Godfathers of AI;” Steve Wozniak, a co-founder of Apple; Steve Bannon, a close ally of President Trump; Paolo Benanti, an adviser to the Pope; and even Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.
The letter was coordinated and published by the Future of Life Institute, a nonprofit that in 2023 published a different open letter calling for a six-month pause on the development of powerful AI systems. Although widely-circulated, that letter did not achieve its goal.
More in: https://time.com/7327409/ai-agi-superintelligent-open-letter/
AI systems with human-competitive intelligence, the letter noted, could pose profound risks to society and humanity, as shown by extensive research and acknowledged by top AI labs. As stated in the widely-endorsed Asilomar AI Principles, advanced AI could represent a profound change in the history of life on Earth, and should be planned for and managed with commensurate care and resources. Unfortunately, this level of planning and management is not happening, even though recent months have seen AI labs locked in an out-of-control race to develop and deploy ever more powerful digital minds that no one – not even their creators – can understand, predict, or reliably control.
AI labs and independent experts should use this pause to jointly develop and implement a set of shared safety protocols for advanced AI design and development that are rigorously audited and overseen by independent outside experts. These protocols should ensure that systems adhering to them are safe beyond a reasonable doubt. This does not mean a pause on AI development in general, merely a stepping back from the dangerous race to ever-larger unpredictable black-box models with emergent capabilities.
It is vital to mention another “historic” open letter from 2023 requiring “all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4”. More in: https://futureoflife.org/open-letter/pause-giant-ai-experiments/