Depending on the kindness of otters
Some sparse notes and plenty of links
Hello, dear reader, and welcome to another issue of AI, Law, and Otter Things! I hope this newsletter finds you well. After the latest issue, I was planning to share another exploratory essay with you folks, to discuss some of the ideas I am working on.1 However, these plans were changed by personal and professional developments.
On the one hand, Winnie (my adorable dog) has undergone surgery, which means that, between the pre-surgery stress and her (fortunately excellent) recovery, I had little time for non-urgent projects. On the other hand, I finally found some time to work on a book proposal based on my PhD thesis, which I hope to submit soon-ish. As a result, today’s newsletter will focus on topics about which I can write without much deviation from my work.
This means, for instance, that today I will deviate from my usual stance of not commenting the news in order to share my two cents about recent developments in global AI policy. Then, I will do the shameless plugging of my work I do from time to time. I will also have a short rant about what helps me maintain some semblance of productivity as a scholar. After that, the usual: reading recommendations, calls for papers and job opportunities, and some otters. Hope you enjoy it!
A selection of recent developments
The AI Summit
For the past week or so, much attention has been directed towards the AI Summit taking place in Paris. I must confess I haven’t been following it particularly closely, even though many people I respect are there or at one of the numerous side-events. Still, despite my best efforts, there was no way to avoid the US vice-president JD Vance’s speech against European “overregulation”. The speech features many of the clichés about American innovation x EU red tape,2 as well as the rhetorics one has grown to expect from the current occupants of the White House.
What is distinctive—but by no means surprising—is its bluntness in retreating from cooperation and signalling the inclination to respond to EU regulatory efforts. At least in theory, the EU has some means it can use to respond to US pressure, especially if it is converted into outright coercive measures. Still, at this point, it seems likely that the change in tune from the other side of the Atlantic will only feed the drive for de-regulation that is already strong in Europe.
The age of simplification
This drive can be seen, for example, in the European Commission’s work programme for 2025. It features many initiatives directed towards “simplification” of the existing legal frameworks, and it signals the Commission’s intention to withdraw various proposals which it sees as outdated or unlikely to gain enough traction for approval. Among the withdrawn proposals, some are particularly relevant for readers interested in digital regulation:3
The withdrawal of the proposed regulation on standard-essential patents is, among other things, likely to add to the controversies surrounding the AI Act (and the Cyber Resilience Act)’s reliance on technical standards for regulation.
The fact that the Commission has given up on updating the rules and principles on how Member States can control the Commission’s implementing powers is likely to affect the loads of implementing acts required by the latest waves of EU digital law.
The withdrawal of the proposed ePrivacy regulation finally makes official the death of a proposal that was as necessarily as it was unlikely to prosper in the current moment.4 So, I guess we’re stuck with a 2002 directive for privacy. Good thing not much has changedin the digital environment since then.
Last but surely not least, the withdrawal of the proposed AI Liability Directive means we are likely to see the proliferation of national arrangements for addressing the harms caused by/through AI. Quite a bit has already been said about this particular topic (see, e.g., Hacker), and I am not a liability specialist, so I will refrain from adding more at this point. Nonetheless, this is an important change to the planned design of the EU’s architecture for AI regulation.
All in all, while I am more likely to be sympathetic to simplification arguments than many of my peers,5 I don’t see that agenda as an auspicious start. People who see overregulation as the problem are unlikely to see this agenda as doing enough, while people concerned with other structural problems in EU law can rightly point out that the measures generate additional undertainty in an already confusing status quo. I have the impression that both critiques are right, and this agenda will likely bring little more than quick wins with specific political audiences. Let’s see whether and how the Commission will come up with alternatives for the gaps the withdrawn proposals were meant to address.
Commission guidelines on the AI Act
Meanwhile, the Commission has emitted two sets of guidelines regarding the provisions of the AI Act that are now in force. First, the Commission has approved (but not yet adopted) a gargantuan discussion (140 pages) of what falls (or not) into the scope of Article 5’s prohibition of certain AI practices. The day after, it released (mercifully shorter) guidelines on Article 3(1)’s definition of “artificial intelligence system”. Those guidelines signal how the Commission understands—and is likely to apply—the corresponding provisions, but they are not binding on regulated actors or national authorities.
Perhaps that non-binding character is for the best. The proposed formulations are not particular clear, and at times they seem to clash with established case law and even reasonable interpretations of the Act’s text. I am currently writing down some initial impressions on the guidelines about the definition, so I will spare you from spoilers. Still, it seems likely that the guidelines will create more confusion than they will remove.
What I’ve been up to
After the publication of my latest newsletter, two short works of mine are now available. The first one is a pre-print of an encyclopaedia entry on the Brussels Effect, which Anca Radu and I are preparing for the Elgar Concise Encyclopedia on Extraterritoriality and the Law (Parrish, Ryngaert, Ireland-Piper (eds)). The second one is a brief overview of the AI Act and its implications for financial regulation, published in an ebook by the EU Supervisory Digital Finance Academy. Check them out, and let me know if you have any comments or suggestions (especially for the pre-print)!
It takes a village…
From time to time, I like to write a bit about my working habits. Right after my thesis defence, I shared a few paragraphs about how I like to approach research and how I benefit from tapping into sources that do not always appear in law & tech scholarship. Yet, I can only approach research that way thanks to two factors I must acknowledge: my less-than-straightforward path to legal academia and the material conditions that enable me to work as I do. Today, I want to express my gratitude to some of the people that supported—and still support—my scholarly work.
First of all, my wife Renata. I had the good luck to meet her at a point in my life when I was finally ready to look to the future, and I really love our companionship and the life we are building together. Sharing my life with her has been amazing not just on personal grounds, but it has also helped me much in maturing as a scholar. Not just because we can work together in dealing with the material needs of life, but also because she has always been supportive and a critical audience for my work. Without her, I don’t think I could’ve gone as far as I did so far.
I also owe a lot to my mentors and peers. From my early years in school to my current postdoctoral contract, I have more often than not been supported by amazing professors who helped me find opportunities and get past obstacles. I have also had the pleasure of working with many colleagues who helped me learn more not just about substantive topics but about what I want (or not) as a scholar.
Also, this seems like the perfect opportunity to acknowledge my deby to some people I’ve only met through social networks. My interactions over Twitter (and, nowadays, Bluesky) have always been a rich source of ideas, techniques, references and, yes, friends. Thanks, random internet strangers.
This is not meant to be an exhaustive list, of course. After all, I am not even naming most of the people I would like to thank.6 But I feel this has been self-indulgent enough for now, so I’d like to wrap up with the usual disclaimer that any issues you might have with my work are not their fault.
Recommendations
Guillaume Beaumier, Jonas Heering and Abraham Newman, ‘Running out the Digital Clock: Transatlantic Privacy Politics and Veto Points in Time’ (2024) 46 Journal of European Integration 993.
Julia Carver, ‘More Bark than Bite? European Digital Sovereignty Discourse and Changes to the European Union’s External Relations Policy’ (2024) 31 Journal of European Public Policy 2250.
Cary Coglianese, ‘The Limits of Performance-Based Regulation’ (2016) 50 University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform 525.
Jean-Christophe Le Coze and Benoît Journé (eds), The Regulator–Regulatee Relationship in High-Hazard Industry Sectors: New Actors and New Viewpoints in a Conservative Landscape (Springer 2024).
Simona Demková and Giovanni De Gregorio, ‘The Looming Enforcement Crisis in European Digital Policy’ (Verfassungsblog, 10 February 2025).
David Manheim and Scott Garrabrant, ‘Categorizing Variants of Goodhart’s Law’ (arXiv, 24 February 2019).
Laís Martins, ‘Brazil’s AI Law Faces Uncertain Future as Big Tech Warms to Trump’ (Tech Policy Press, 4 February 2025).
OWASP, ‘OWASP Top 10 for LLM Applications 2025’.
Mona Sloane and Elena Wüllhorst, ‘A Systematic Review of Regulatory Strategies and Transparency Mandates in AI Regulation in Europe, the United States, and Canada’ (2025) 7 Data & Policy e11.
Jessica Weinkle, ‘Experts, Regulatory Capture, and the “Governor’s Dilemma”: The Politics of Hurricane Risk Science and Insurance’ (2020) 14 Regulation & Governance 637.
Opportunities
Tilburg Law School is looking for a lecturer in law and technology. Applications are due by 28 February, with an envisaged starting date of 1 April 2025.
UCL Laws is hiring an Associate Professor / Lecturer in Intellectual Property and Information Technology Law. Applications are due by 28 February.
The European Constitutional Law Review invites submissions to the EuConst 2025 Symposium for Early-Career Scholars. Abstracts and CVs are due by 3 March, with the symposium taking place on 24 June.
The ERC Starting Grant project ‘SoftEn’, led by Lilian Tsourdi (Maastricht University) is hiring two doctoral researchers and a post-doctoral researcher. One of the doctoral positions will be co-supervised by the amazing Sarah Tas. Deadline for application is 9 March.
The Jean Monnet Centre of Excellente JUST AI, based in Liège, invites submissions to its summer colloquium on fairness, accuracy, knowability, and transparency. Abstracts are due by 15 March, with the event taking place on 23-24 June.
Bocconi University in Milan (Italy) is hiring an Assistant Professor (tenure track) in EU Law. Applications are due by 30 March.
The Max Planck European Law Group invites abstract submissions for the Fourth Max Planck Conference for Early Career European Scholars on 4 and 5 September 2025 in Munich. This year’s conference focuses on Fairness as a Principle of European Law, and abstracts are due by 1 April.
The TPRC conference on communications, information, and internet policy will accept submissions from 15 February to 15 March. The event also has a student paper competition, which accepts student papers until 30 April. The conference itself will take place on Washington, D.C., on 19-20 September.
The Journal of European Consumer and Market Law invites submissions for its best paper award. Papers should be submitted by 30 May to eucmlaward@gmail.com, and the finalists will be selected to present their papers at the EuCML Annual Conference on 19 September, and have their paper published in the EuCML’s final issue of 2025.
Finally, the otters
And now, for something completely different, I leave you with DALL-E’s take on a classical scene. It’s no KazanBot, one must admit.
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Always a good way to see if they make sense outside your head before investing more time on them.
There are many explanations of why that cliché misses what is actually wrong with innovation in Europe. See, e.g., Anu Bradford’s article.
Probably, most of you.
In the same note, RIP changes to the access to documents regulation.
Especially when it comes to proposals that were already in limbo. The ePrivacy Regulation, in particular, seemed already as likely as the Year of Linux on the Desktop.
Some of them are very easy to identify; others, not so much. But I should do a better job of expressing that in one-on-one communication.