“No idea” how the EU’s new AI rules will be implemented: head of the insurance lobby

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The European Commission is just beginning its new mandate – and financial sector lobbyists already have a shopping list of laws it would like to cut or scrap.

Ursula von der Leyen has promised to make competitiveness the watchword of her second term in office. The economic data shows that the bloc is lagging far behind the performance in the US – and companies like to point to EU laws that they believe are holding them back.

One of these, AXA’s Frédéric de Courtois told Euronews, is Brussels’ groundbreaking artificial intelligence law, passed earlier this year, which subjects the riskiest machine learning systems to strict rules and potentially imposes fines of 7% of turnover for violations.

Former European Commissioner Thierry Breton hailed it as a “balanced, risk-based and future-proof regulation” that made Europe a “global standard setter for trustworthy AI.”

But the industry still seems to be groping in the dark – and sees this as a symbol of the EU’s overly cautious approach.

De Courtois, deputy CEO at AXA and president of Brussels-based lobby group Insurance Europe, told Euronews he had “no idea how the AI ​​law will be implemented,” despite the technology being a “critical issue for the insurance industry.”

He pointed to potential AI applications in pricing, claims and underwriting – but said concerns about bias or invasion of privacy could be addressed through a set of principles rather than a 144-page binding law.

“The European approach is to try to have an answer to everything, which I don’t think is the right way,” he said, adding: “We should make sure we don’t regulate before we innovate.”

In a speech on Wednesday, shortly before she was confirmed for a second term by 370 votes to 282, von der Leyen promised MPs she would reduce excessive regulatory burdens.

It could start with a series of recent financial laws that require companies to detail the environmental impact of their supply chains, which many complain creates competing or contradictory requirements.

Climate change is “the biggest threat we face” and the costs of extreme weather events such as floods often have to be borne by insurers, said de Courtois – but he hopes the urgency of action will be tempered by “pragmatism and flexibility”. .