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, Open Data Directive

10.05-10.25    Lucie Antoine, LMU University, Munich, Data Act

10.25-10.40    COFFEE BREAK

10.40-11.00    Bernt Hugenholtz, University of Amsterdam, Text and Data Mining in the DSM-directive

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 DSM-directive

13.05-13.25    Benjamin Raue, University of Trier, Digital Services Act

13.25-13.45    Lucia Bonova, Head of Unit, COMP J.1, Digital Markets Act

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, AI Act

15.05- 15.25   Thomas Vinje, University of Bergen, AI and competition law

15.25-16.00    Pamela Samuelson, UC Berkeley, U.S. perspectives on AI

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