On 10 April 2024, the French National Assembly adopted the Bill on Securing and Regulating the Digital Space (known as the “SREN Bill”), following the Senate’s validation a week earlier. The Bill contains a multitude of provisions, regarding a variety of important topics in the digital realm such as the protection of children online and reducing dependence of French companies on cloud service providers. The bill is expected to become law in the coming weeks.…
Where can I find the text of the Data Act? The published text can be found here. What is the Data Act about? It requires organisations to make data collected through connected products or related services (including virtual assistants in so far as they interact with a connected product or related service) available to users and, upon a user’s request, to third parties. By mixing concepts of both data and competition law, the Data Act…
The EU AI Act was adopted by the European Parliament today and is expected to enter into force within a few months, with its first substantive provisions taking effect before the end of 2024. The EU AI Act applies across the AI lifecycle – from developers to deployers of AI technologies – and organisations across industries have been watching its progress closely. Now that it is finally approved, we set out below what’s next, and…
Hot on the heels of the unanimous vote by Ambassadors for the EU Member States (COREPER) approving the EU AI Act on 2 February (see our article on that vote here: Is the EU AI Act nearing the finish line? – Connect On Tech, today lawmakers from the EU Parliament have also overwhelmingly voted in favour of the Act as it continues on its legislative journey. The joint internal market and civil liberties committee of…
The new EU regulation on electronic evidence will enable law enforcement authorities from one EU member state to order service providers in other EU member states to surrender digital evidence. Providers who fail to comply within ten days or, in urgent cases, within eight hours, could face fines of up to two percent of their global group turnover. We manage our calendars online, store photos in the cloud, many of us haven’t seen the inside…
A key step towards adoption of the EU AI Act was reached last Friday as the draft text received unanimous approval from the European Council’s main preparatory body. There are further votes to follow before the Act is adopted, but it’s looking likely that the final vote will take place in April and some substantive provisions of the Act could be in force soon after that, possibly by the end of the year. We set…
Whilst the EU’s AI Act has been grabbing all the headlines, the draft AI Convention has been flying under the radar. But not for much longer. The Convention, also sometimes called the ‘AI Treaty’, has been drafted by the Council of Europe. If adopted, it will be the first legally binding international convention on AI. The latest draft is not the final version, but contains text that is still subject to negotiation. We’ve set out…
On December 22, 2023 the EU Regulation on harmonised rules on fair access to and use of data, also known as the Data Act, was published in the Official Journal of the European Union. It shall enter into force on the twentieth day following that of its publication, namely on January 11, 2024, and become applicable on September 12, 2025. The Data Act affects manufacturers of connected products and also providers of related services, including virtual…
The SDPA and the CNMC, among other institutions, launch a series of coordinated actions related to the age verification of minors online, aimed at reinforcing their protection and preventing their access to harmful content. As in the rest of the European Union, the protection of minors online is one of the main areas of concern of Spanish authorities such as the Spanish Data Protection Agency (“SDPA”), the National Commission for Markets and Competition (“CNMC”) and…
This past year brought the rapid rise of ChatGPT and other generative AI platforms, accompanied by several noteworthy legal and regulatory developments. 2024 promises to continue with technology advances, making it a pivotal year for businesses navigating global data privacy and cybersecurity risks. Our Baker McKenzie Top 10 predictions for 2024 follow. AI-enhanced cyber threats will increase globally. Threat actors will continue to leverage AI for increasingly sophisticated attacks, exploiting new technologies to enable highly-personalized…