{"id":142013,"date":"2025-11-19T16:55:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T16:55:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/142013\/"},"modified":"2025-11-19T16:55:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T16:55:08","slug":"european-commission-accused-of-massive-rollback-of-digital-protections-european-commission","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/142013\/","title":{"rendered":"European Commission accused of \u2018massive rollback\u2019 of digital protections | European Commission"},"content":{"rendered":"

The European Commission<\/a> has been accused of \u201ca massive rollback\u201d of the EU\u2019s digital rules after announcing proposals to delay central parts of the Artificial Intelligence Act and water down its landmark data protection regulation.<\/p>\n

If agreed, the changes would make it easier for tech firms to use personal data to train AI models without asking for consent, and try to end \u201ccookie banner fatigue\u201d by reducing the number times internet users have to give their permission to being tracked on the internet.<\/p>\n

The commission also confirmed the intention to delay the introduction of central parts of the AI Act<\/a>, which came into force in August 2024 and does not yet fully apply to companies.<\/p>\n

Companies making high-risk AI systems, namely those posing risks to health, safety or fundamental rights, such as those used in exam scoring or surgery, would get up to 18 months longer to comply with the rules.<\/p>\n

The plans were part of the commission\u2019s \u201cdigital omnibus\u201d, which tries to streamline tech rules including GDPR<\/a>, the AI Act, the ePrivacy directive and the Data Act.<\/p>\n

After a long period of rule-making, the EU agenda has shifted since the former Italian prime minister Mario Draghi warned in a report last autumn<\/a> that Europe had fallen behind the US and China in innovation and was weak in the emerging technologies that would drive future growth, such as AI. The EU has also come under heavy pressure from the Trump administration<\/a> to rein in digital laws.<\/p>\n

The EU\u2019s economy commissioner, Valdis Dombrovskis, said: \u201cEurope has not so far reaped the full benefits of the digital revolution and we cannot afford to continue to pay the price for failing to keep up with a changing world.\u201d He added that the measures would save business and consumers \u20ac5bn in administrative costs by 2029.<\/p>\n

They are part of the bloc\u2019s wider drive for \u201csimplification\u201d<\/a>, with plans under way to scale back regulation on the environment, company reporting on supply chains and agriculture. Like these other proposals, the digital omnibus will need to be approved by EU minsters and the European parliament.<\/p>\n

European Digital Rights (EDRi), a pan-European network of NGOs, described the plans as \u201ca major rollback of EU digital protections\u201d that risked dismantling \u201cthe very foundations of human rights and tech policy in the EU\u201d.<\/p>\n

In particular, it said that changes to GDPR<\/a> would allow \u201cthe unchecked use of people\u2019s most intimate data for training AI systems\u201d and that a wide range of exemptions proposed to online privacy rules would mean businesses would be able to read data on phones and browsers without asking.<\/p>\n

European business groups welcomed the proposals but said they did not go far enough. A representative from the Computer and Communications Industry Association, whose members include Amazon, Apple, Google and Meta, said: \u201cEfforts to simplify digital and tech rules cannot stop here.\u201d The CCIA urged \u201ca more ambitious, all-encompassing review of the EU\u2019s entire digital rulebook\u201d.<\/p>\n

Critics of the shake-up included the EU\u2019s former commissioner for enterprise, Thierry Breton, who wrote in the Guardian that Europe should resist attempts to unravel its digital rulebook<\/a> \u201cunder the pretext of simplification or remedying an alleged \u2018anti-innovation\u2019 bias. No one is fooled over the transatlantic origin of these attempts.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The commission\u2019s vice-president in charge of tech policy, Henna Virkkunen, pushed back against suggestions that Brussels was responding to US pressure. \u201cWe want to support our start ups, our SMEs to scale up their businesses to innovate in the EU,\u201d she said. \u201cWe are not so much here looking at big industries or the very big tech companies \u2026 They have also the resources to comply with different rules.\u201d<\/p>\n

She also rejected claims that the AI Act was being watered down, saying that action was needed to prevent European start-ups from moving to other jurisdictions.<\/p>\n

Michael McGrath, the EU commissioner responsible for the GDPR, said most of the feedback on the proposals had come from companies in the EU. He said the commission was introducing \u201ctargeted amendments to GDPR\u201d that clarified existing concepts and principles while \u201censuring a high level of data protection across the EU\u201d.<\/p>\n

EU officials said users would remain in control of their data on the internet, but new rules on cookies \u2013 the internet files that are stored on a user\u2019s device so a website can remember them \u2013 would make life simpler by ensuring one-click consent. \u201cI think we can all agree we have spent too much of our time accepting or rejecting cookies,\u201d Virkkunen said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The European Commission has been accused of \u201ca massive rollback\u201d of the EU\u2019s digital rules after announcing proposals…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":142014,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[345,343,344,85,46,125],"class_list":{"0":"post-142013","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-il","12":"tag-israel","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142013\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}