Highlights from the Past Weeks
CW 35 / Monday, 29 August to Thursday, 1 September: Committee Meeting Week (Brussels);
DIGITAL SERVICES ACT – IMCO VOTE ON 12 SEPTEMBER: In a meeting on 12 September, MEPs of the Internal Market Committee (IMCO) will vote on the DSA.
According to the office of the rapporteur Christel Schaldemose (S&D, Denmark), the text contains some changes made by legal and linguistic experts but without substantial changes compared to the text adopted in July.
The IMCO Committee secretariat also confirmed this, stating that the corrigendum covers the usual legal-linguistic revision of the regulation, which took place after the adoption of the text in plenary but before the adoption by the Council. (see FiscalNote EU Issue Tracker, paywall)
DATA ACT – EP HEARING POSTPONED: The public hearing on the Data Bill in the Industry Committee (ITRE) has been moved to 26 October as a result of a busy calendar. The deadline for amendments was also postponed accordingly to 28 October.
Behind the scenes, a dispute is underway between ITRE and the Internal Market Committee (IMCO) over the timetable, with the former pushing for quick adoption and the latter wanting to take its time. The new timetable talks about a vote in committee in the first week of February, which would be earlier than the vote planned in IMCO. Meanwhile, the two other committees involved (LIBE, JURI) are also struggling with the short deadlines (see Euractiv).
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE I – IMCO AND LIBE WORK ON COMPROMISE: As Euractiv reports, co-rapporteurs B. Benifei and D. Tudorache circulated new compromise amendments at the end of August, which were discussed in a technical meeting last Tuesday.
These would propose “changes to the provisions on high-risk obligations, the distribution of responsibility within the AI supply chain, technical standards and administrative procedures for supervisory bodies. The co-rapporteurs B. Benifei and D. Tudorache focused on advancing the least controversial parts of the text, which were adopted with minor amendments. The discussion could pick up steam next week on regulatory sandboxes.”
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE II – VOTING IN JURI: The Legal Affairs Committee will adopt A. Voss’ opinion on the AI Act on Monday. A consensus on the voting modalities was reached early last week. The compromise amendments were adopted. However, only a few changes were made to the provisions for which JURI is exclusively responsible. In particular, two recitals on transparency (Articles 13 and 52) and on human control (Article 14) have been added: The first recital in compromise proposal 6 clarifies that transparency requirements must contribute to combating “dark patterns”. The second, in compromise 7, emphasises the need to provide adequate training and resources to persons responsible for the human control of high-risk systems (see Contexte, FR, paywall).
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE III – FORTHCOMING COMMISSION LIABILITY PROPOSAL: In addition to updating the Product Liability Directive, the EU Commission also intends to present a proposal for AI liability at the end of September. According to Euractiv, it will be relatively compact with ten articles.
The focus will be on causality and the burden of proof, and the reversal of the burden of proof will be considered. The main issues are said to be the criteria and definitions, as the Commission needs to ensure that the key concepts are in line with the AI Act.
DIGITAL MARKETS ACT – COMMISSION PLANS IMPLEMENTING REGULATION: The European Commission has published the website for the public consultation on the upcoming DMA implementing legislation.
This secondary legislation will set out crucial aspects of the forthcoming legislation, such as how gatekeepers must notify the EU executive that they meet the quantitative criteria, how market surveys will be conducted and what technical measures gatekeepers must take to ensure compliance. The Commission is expected to publish the draft laws in the coming weeks (see Euractiv).
GERMANY – RED LINE ON CHAT MONITORING: As German media reported last week (see among others Netzpolitik.org, DE), the FDP has written down its “red lines” for the CSAM proposal and shared them with the coalition partners.
According to the letter, for example, “no rules leading to chat monitoring” should be introduced, “personal storage that is not shared” should be excluded and “so-called unknown material and grooming” should be deleted. There must also be an “explicit exclusion of the use of client-side scanning and the removal of end-to-end encryption for the fulfilment of obligations under the draft regulation”.
AUSTRIA – BLOCKING OF ONLINE CONTENT CAUSES INTERNET OUTAGES: At the end of August, blocking of online content in Austria demonstrated what Internet experts regularly warn against: Overblocking.
A block requested by a well-known collecting society led to connection problems with several Austrian Internet access providers. “LSG – Wahrnehmung von Leistungsschutzrechten GmbH” had a number of IP addresses placed on the block list. The list also included addresses from Cloudflare’s IP pool.
The result: Many legitimate sites using Cloudflare’s services were suddenly no longer accessible (see Der Standard, DE)
USA – MORE PRIVACY FOR CHILDREN IN CALIFORNIA: The California legislature last week overwhelmingly passed a bill requiring platforms to ensure the privacy and security of services that can be used by minors, modelled on a similar provision already in place in the UK. The California Age-Appropriate Design Code will require platforms to consider the extent to which elements of their websites could harm users under 18 and take steps to prevent this. These include banning the use of dark patterns, restricting harmful data collection and banning profiling of children. The law still has to be signed by the governor (see CNBC).
Relevant publications, including from the EP Think Tank:
- General product safety regulation (Briefing)
- Unionisation and the twin transition (Study)
- Unionisation and the twin transition (At a Glance)
- High common level of cybersecurity at the institutions, bodies, offices and agencies of the Union (Briefing)
- Economic impacts of the green transition (Briefing)
Outlook for the Current Week
You can find a list of the upcoming dates of the European Parliament here. The meeting calendar for 2022 can be found here (PDF). On Monday, the Committee on Legal Affairs will, among other things, vote on the opinion on the AI proposal by A. Voss.
An overview of the most important dates of the Council week can be found here, and the meeting calendar can be accessed here. You can access the official calendar of the Czech Presidency here (PDF).
Included among these dates are:
Summits and Ministerial Meetings:
- Informal Meeting of Health Ministers, 6-7 September 2022, Tuesday, 6 and Wednesday,7 September 2022
- Extraordinary Transport, Telecommunications and Energy Council (Energy), Friday 9 September;
- Informal Meeting of Economic and Financial Affairs Ministers, Friday 9 and Saturday 10 September;
Preparatory Bodies:
- Working Party on Tax Questions (Direct Taxation), Monday, 5 September;
- Working Party on Telecommunications and Information Society (e.g., eID, AI, Data Act), Monday, 5 September and Thursday, 8 September;
- Working Party on Competitiveness and Growth (Industry) (i.a. Chips Act), Monday, 5 September and Thursday, 8 September;
- Horizontal Working Party on Cyber Issues, Monday, 5 September;
- Working Party on Law Enforcement (Police) (including CSAM), Tuesday, 6 September;
- Horizontal Working Party on Enhancing Resilience and Countering Hybrid Threats, Tuesday, Tuesday, 6 September;
- Working Party on Consumer Protection and Information (Product Safety), Wednesday 7 September;
- Working Party on Judicial Cooperation in Criminal Matters (COPEN), Wednesday, 7 and Thursday, 8 September;
- Working Party on Competition, Thursday, 8 September;
- Working Party on Competitiveness and Growth (Internal Market) (including Ecodesign Regulation), Friday, 9 September;
- Working Party on Intellectual Property, Thursday, 8 and Friday, 9 September;
- Coreper I, Wednesday, 7 September;
- Coreper II, Wednesday, 7 September;
Information on the weekly Commission meeting can be found in the preview (PDF) or (at short notice) in the current agenda.
The following topics are on the agenda for this week:
- European care strategy package
- European care strategy
- Proposal for a Council Recommendation on long-term care
- Proposal for a Council Recommendation on the revision of the Barcelona targets
On 13 September, the Cyber Resilience Act and the Media Freedom Act, among others, are on the Commission’s agenda.
You can find the CJEU court calendar here. Three dates in September are dedicated to the GDPR (see GDPR Beetle):
- On 8 September, an Advocate General will issue a non-binding opinion on Articles 77 and 79 (right to complain and bring an action) of the GDPR (C-132/21).
- On 20 September, the judgments in the Spacenet data retention case (C-793/19 & C-794/19) and VD & SR (C 339/20 & C-397/20) will be delivered and the Attorney General will issue an opinion on whether the GDPR prevents the German competition authority from assessing whether Meta’s data processing is compatible with the GDPR (C-252/21).
- On 22 September, there will be another opinion by the Advocate General on Article 88 of the GDPR, on whether national law on the protection of the processing of personal data applies when the law does not meet the requirements of Article 88 (C-34/21).
European Parliament Committees
CW 36 / Monday, 5 to Thursday, 8 September: Political Group and Committee Meetings Week (Brussels);
LIBE Committee (Civil Liberties)
Current Meetings
- Monday, 5 September 2022, 14.30-18.30 (Brussels)
Excerpt from the current agenda
5 September 2022, 14.30 – 16.15
…
- Czech Presidency of the Council of the European Union, 2022
LIBE/9/09549
- Presentation by VĂt Rakušan, 1st Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior of the Czech Republic
- Presentation by Pavel BlaĹľek, Minister of Justice of the Czech Republic
- Presentation by Mikuláš Bek, Minister for European Affairs of the Czech Republic
…
5 September 2022, 18.00 – 18.15
- Resilience of critical entities
LIBE/9/04986
***I 2020/0365(COD) COM(2020)0829 – C9-0421/2020
| Rapporteur: | |||
| Michal Ĺ imeÄŤka (Renew) | |||
| Responsible: | |||
| LIBE* | |||
| Opinions: | |||
| AFET | Lukas Mandl (PPE) | AD – PE692.863v02-00 AM – PE694.954v01-00 AM – PE694.948v01-00 |
|
| ECON | Decision: no opinion | ||
| ITRE* | Nils Torvalds (Renew) | AD – PE692.663v02-00 AM – PE693.620v01-00 |
|
| IMCO* | Alex Agius Saliba (S&D) | AD – PE691.165v03-00 AM – PE692.785v01-00 |
|
| TRAN | Angel Dzhambazki (ECR) | AD – PE692.636v02-00 AM – PE693.634v01-00 AM – PE693.635v01-00 |
|
- Reporting back to committee on the negotiations (Rule 74(3))
5 September 2022, 18.15 – 18.30
- Transparency and targeting of political advertising
LIBE/9/07813
***I 2021/0381(COD) COM(2021)0731 – C9-0433/2021
| Rapporteur for the opinion: | |||
| Anna Júlia Donáth (Renew) | PA – PE734.324v01-00 | ||
| Responsible: | |||
| IMCO* | Sandro Gozi (Renew) | PR – PE732.754v01-00 | |
- Consideration of amendments
*** Electronic vote ***
…
Further Meetings (Calendar)
- Monday, 10 October 2022, 15.00-18.30 (Brussels)
JURI Committee (Legal Affairs)
Current Meetings
- Monday, 5 September 2022, 15.30-18.30 (Brussels)
Excerpt from the draft agenda
5 September 2022, 14.30 – 15.00
…
7. Harmonised rules on Artificial Intelligence (Artificial Intelligence Act) and amending certain Union Legislative Acts
JURI/9/05999
***I 2021/0106(COD) COM(2021)0206 – C9-0146/2021
| Rapporteur for the opinion: | |||
| Axel Voss (PPE) | PA – PE719.827v01-00 AM – PE730.042v01-00 AM – PE730.041v01-00 AM – PE730.031v01-00 |
||
| Responsible: | |||
| IMCO, LIBE* | Brando Benifei (S&D) DragoĹź Tudorache (Renew) |
PR – PE731.563v01-00 AM – PE732.836v01-00 AM – PE732.840v01-00 AM – PE732.841v01-00 AM – PE732.837v01-00 AM – PE732.843v01-00 AM – PE732.802v01-00 AM – PE732.844v01-00 AM – PE732.838v01-00 AM – PE732.839v01-00 |
|
•  Adoption of draft opinion
TBC
•  Deadline for tabling amendments: 23 March 2022, 12.00
…
- Transparency and targeting of political advertising
JURI/9/07815
***I 2021/0381(COD) COM(2021)0731 – C9-0433/2021
| Rapporteur for the opinion: | |||
| Angelika Niebler (PPE) | PA – PE735.590v01-00 | ||
| Responsible: | |||
| IMCO* | Sandro Gozi (Renew) | PR – PE732.754v01-00 | |
- Consideration of draft opinion
- Harmonised rules on fair access to and use of data (Data Act)
JURI/9/08517
***I 2022/0047(COD) COM(2022)0068 – C9-0051/2022
| Rapporteur for the opinion: | |||
| Ibán GarcĂa Del Blanco (S&D) | |||
| Responsible: | |||
| ITRE* | Pilar del Castillo Vera (PPE) | ||
- Exchange of views
…
Further Meetings (Calendar)
- Monday, 3 October 2022
Dossiers Timetable (2 September 2022)
ITRE Committee (Industry)
Current Meetings
- None
Further Meetings (Calendar)
- Monday, 26 September 2022, 15.00-18.30 (Brussels)
Dossiers Timetable (30 August 2022)
IMCO Committee (Internal Market)
Current Meetings
- Thursday, 8 September, 14.00-17.30 (Brussels)
Excerpt from the current agenda
…
Â
- Amending Regulation (EU) No 910/2014 as regards establishing a framework for a European Digital Identity
IMCO/9/06237
***I 2021/0136(COD) COM(2021)0281 – C9-0200/2021
| Rapporteur for the opinion: | |||
| Andrus Ansip (Renew) | PA – PE704.865v01-00 AM – PE731.599v01-00 |
||
| Responsible: | |||
| ITRE* | Romana Jerković (S&D) | PR – PE732.707v01-00 AM – PE734.285v01-00 AM – PE734.286v01-00 |
|
- Consideration of compromise amendments
- Establishing a framework of measures for strengthening Europe’s semiconductor ecosystem (Chips Act)
IMCO/9/08360
***I 2022/0032(COD) COM(2022)0046 – C9-0039/2022
| Rapporteur for the opinion: | |||
| Maria-Manuel Leitão-Marques (S&D) | PA – PE735.490v02-00 | ||
| Responsible: | |||
| ITRE* | Dan Nica (S&D) | ||
- Consideration of draft opinion
- Deadline for tabling amendments: 13 September 2022, 12.00
With the Commission
…
Further Meetings (Calendar)
- Monday, 12 September, 19.00-20.30 (Strasbourg)
Dossiers Timetable (July 2022)
CULT Committee (Culture)
Current Meetings
- None
Further Meetings (Calendar)
- Monday, 3 October 2022 (Strasbourg)
PEGA Committee (Pegasus Committee of Inquiry)
Current Meetings
- Thursday, 8 September 2022, 9.00-12.30 (Brussels)
Excerpt from the current agenda
Further Meetings
- Open
INGE2 Committee (Special Committee on Foreign Interference)
Current Meetings
- None
Further Meetings (Calendar)
- Thursday, 29 September 2022, 9.00-12.30 (Brussels)
Further Parliamentary Calendar Dates
CW 37 / Monday, 12 to Thursday, 15 September: Plenary Session Week (Strasbourg);
CW 38 / Monday, 19 to Friday, 23 September: Green Week (no sessions);
CW 39 / Monday, 26 to Thursday, 29 September: Political Group and Committee Meetings Week (Brussels);
