Europe’s Digital Agenda: Is the AI Act the Final Act? In Search of Common Principles

Over the past five years the European Union legislature has passed a flurry of ambitious directives and regulations dealing with various aspects of Europe’s digital economy: the Digital Single Market (DSM) Directive (2019), the Open Data Directive (2019), the Data Governance Act (2022), the Digital Services Act (2022), the Digital Market Act (2022), the Data Act (2023) and the AI Act (2024).

While these legal instruments touch upon different legal domains, ranging from intellectual property law, freedom of government information and data protection to media regulation, competition law, and consumer protection, there is considerable overlap – and increasing confusion about their reach and scope, the new governance structures they establish, and their underlying policies.

It introduces a ban on high-risk AI technologies, establishes far reaching transparency measures, demands human oversight, prohibits misleading uses of AI, creates new supervisory authorities, and enhances protection of human creators against being “trained” by LLM’s.

This international conference – the first of its kind – searches for common principles and doctrines in Europe’s Digital Agenda, and queries what will be the EU’s next step – if any – in its regulatory adventure in the digital field. It will also compare Europe’s Digital Agenda to developments in the United States and look at the impact of the new European rules on enterprises in the ICT sector in Europe, particularly start-ups.

Programme

8.30-9.00       Registration and coffee 

9.00-9.15       Opening (Dean Karl Harlad Søvig)

9.15-9.45       Introduction: Martin Husovec, LSE Law School

Session 1       Fostering the European Data Economy

9.45-10.05      Heather Broomfield, University of Oslo, Are We There Yet? The Legal Evolution of Public Sector Data Sharing

10.05-10.25    Lucie Antoine, LMU University, Munich, The Data Act: Fair access to data and new possibilities for data-driven innovation – or everything more difficult than before?

10.25-10.40    COFFEE BREAK

10.40-11.00    Bernt Hugenholtz, University of Amsterdam, There’s nothing exceptional about the DSM Directive’s data mining exceptions

11.00-11.45    Panel discussion and Q&A

11.45-12.45    LUNCH BREAK

Session 2        Platform regulation

12.45-13.05    Torger Kielland, University of Bergen, Article 17 CDSM: Platform liability for copyrighted content – too much or not enough?

13.05-13.25    Benjamin Raue, University of Trier, The Digital Services Act: Liability exemptions in exchange for diligence obligations and public oversight

13.25-13.45   Alexander Iken, European Commission, The Digital Markets Act. A sector-specific ex-ante regulation complementing existing and new EU and national regulatory tools

13.45-14.30    Panel discussion and Q&A

14.30-14.45    COFFEE BREAK

Session 3        Regulating AI

14.45-15.05    Alexander Peukert, Goethe University Frankfurt, The Meta-Regulation of AI through the AI Act

15.05- 15.25   Thomas Vinje, University of Bergen, Potential AI-related competition issues and how they might be addressed (or not) under EU antitrust law and the new digital regulations

15.25-16.00    Pamela Samuelson, UC Berkeley, An American Perspective on AI Regulation

16.00-17.00    Panel discussion and Q&A

17.00              Ending

Organizing committee

Professor Torger Kielland, University of Bergen

Emeritus Professor Bernt Hugenholtz, University of Amsterdam

Assistant Professor Thomas Vinje, University of Bergen

Associate Professor Liliia Oprysk, University of Bergen