- Co-legislators agree to extend the Interim Regulation until 3 April 2026
On 15 February, co-legislators reached a provisional agreement on the proposal to extend the application of the Interim Regulation.
The Interim Regulation, which allows providers of number-independent interpersonal communications services to process personal data for the purpose of voluntarily detecting child sexual abuse (CSA), would expire on the 5th of August 2024. This regime was supposed to be replaced by permanent legislation, according to which these service providers (and others) would have to detect, report, and delete that same content on a mandatory basis. However, due to the repeated postponement of the presentation of the proposal by the EC, together with the posterior difficulties in finding an agreement in the Council, the timely replacement of the temporary regime with the permanent one was not possible.
The European Parliament (EP) and the Council have agreed to postpone the expiry date of the temporary regime until the 3rd of April 2026, thus, meeting in between their original proposals (May 2025 and August 2027 respectively).
- The final stretch in the adoption of the AI Act
On 13 February, the Internal Market Consumer Protection (IMCO) and Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) Committees of the EP overwhelmingly approved the provisional political agreement on Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act) reached during trilogues held from 6 to 9 December 2023. The text was approved with 71 votes in favour, 8 against, and 7 abstentions. Both co-legislators have now approved the provisional agreement text as COREPER I Ambassadors had already endorsed the provisional agreement text on February 2nd. Following the final legal linguistic checks, the formal adoption of the AI Act by the EP plenary is expected in April while the final text will be later approved by the Council of the EU.
In principle, the AI Act will become fully applicable 24 months after it enters into force. However, there are exceptions: provisions on prohibited practices will start applying 6 months following the Act’s entry into force, general-purpose AI rules and penalties will start applying after 12 months while the high-risk systems' obligations will start applying 36 months following the text’s entry into force. Nevertheless, codes of practices mentioned in the AI Act shall be ready nine months at the latest after the entry into force of the Regulation.
- Delegated Regulation on MMTIS was published in EU Official Journal
On 13 February, the Delegated Regulation 2024/490 on EU-wide multimodal travel information services (MMTIS) was published in the EU Official Journal. The measures will enter into force 20 days after publication in the EU Official Journal, on the 4th of March 2024.
The Delegated Regulation requires transport operators, transport-on-demand service providers, and transport authorities to share existing static, historic, observed and dynamic data listed in the Annex in digital machine-readable format to National Access Points (NAPs) by a given deadline. The data sharing is not free of charge, however, other EU or national legislation may impose specific requirements. The terms and conditions for the use of the data may be determined through a licence agreement.