Statement by President von der Leyen on the political agreement on the EU AI Act

Statement by President von der Leyen on the AI Act

Artificial intelligence is already changing our everyday lives. And this is just the beginning. Used wisely and widely, AI promises huge benefits to our economy and society.

Therefore, I very much welcome today's political agreement by the European Parliament and the Council on the Artificial Intelligence Act. The EU's AI Act is the first-ever comprehensive legal framework on Artificial Intelligence worldwide. So, this is a historic moment. The AI Act transposes European values to a new era. A commitment we took in our political guidelines for this Commission mandate – and we delivered.

Today's agreement focuses regulation on identifiable risks, provides legal certainty and opens the way for innovation in trustworthy AI. By guaranteeing the safety and fundamental rights of people and businesses, the Act will support the human-centric, transparent and responsible development, deployment and take-up of AI in the EU.

That vision guided us when we first put forward the AI Act in April 2021 – and again just a few weeks ago, when we decided to open our world-class supercomputers to European AI start-ups and SMEs. By accelerating AI training and testing, reducing training time from months to weeks, this will help the EU AI community to scale up in a responsible manner. At the same time, we are investing more than 1 billion euros per year from the Horizon Europe and Digital Europe programmes in AI research and innovation.

Until the Act will be fully applicable, we will support businesses and developers to anticipate the new rules. Around 100 companies have already expressed their interest to join our AI Pact, by which they would commit on a voluntary basis to implement key obligations of the Act ahead of the legal deadline.

Our AI Act will also make a substantial contribution to the development of global guardrails for trustworthy AI. We will continue our work at international level, in the G7, the OECD, the Council of Europe, the G20 and the UN. Just recently, we supported the agreement by G7 leaders under the Hiroshima AI process on International Guiding Principles and a voluntary Code of Conduct for Advanced AI systems.

I would like to thank both the European Parliament and the Council for their hard and diligent work to arrive to today's agreement.