EU Tech Commissioner defends scrapping of AI Liability rules

The AI Liability Directive would not have led to one set of uniform rules across the EU, Henna Virkkunen, the EU Commissioner responsible for tech, told members of the European Parliament’s Legal Affairs committee (JURI) on Wednesday.

“With a directive, member states implement the rules in different ways,” Virkkunen said. “I favour more regulations to make sure we have one single market,” she added, referring to the legal instrument that is equally binding across all member states.

The committee members had asked the Commission why it withdrew the AI Liability Directive after the EU executive said it saw “no foreseeable agreement” on the proposal in its 2025 work program published in February.

The rules were intended to offer consumers a harmonised means of redress when they experience harm arising from AI products or services. They were proposed in 2022 but no significant progress has been made since. 

“We need to fully implement the AI Act before we propose new rules – in the last years the European Commission has proposed a lot of digital rules and we need to simplify them before presenting something new,” Virkkunen said.

Lawmakers have been divided over the need for the rules. The rapporteur in JURI Axel Voss (Germany/EPP), wants to keep working on the dossier. His counterpart in the Internal Market and Consumer Protection committee (IMCO), Kosma Złotowski (Poland/ECR), said in his draft opinion published in January that the “adoption of an AI Liability Directive at this stage is premature and unnecessary.”

Voss said in the JURI hearing on Wednesday that simplification is a trend “but liability rules are needed anyway to create a true digital single market”.

Sergey Lagodinsky (Germany/Greens) said he was “very puzzled” about the reasons for withdrawal and said that co-legislators needed to be consulted. On the other hand, both Diego Solier (Spain/ECR) and Svenja Hahn (Germany/Renew) – members of the IMCO committee — spoke out in favour of the Commission decision. 

Hahn said that the existing product liability laws and national tort laws are enough and that consumers have enough opportunities to file claims. 

In a letter to Virkkunen sent earlier this week, civil society and consumer groups called upon the Commission to work on new AI liability rules to fill “legal gaps”. 

The Commission has until August to make a final decision on the matter.