All Aboard the Digital Omnibus: Shortcut or Detour?

Last week, the European Commission introduced its “Digital Omnibus” bill. The Omnibus is a proposal for a new legislative package supposedly aiming to “simplify” key EU digital regulations such as the GDPR, AI Act, and ePrivacy, with the aim of furthering the region’s innovative potential.

The proposal, along with some country positions, had already been leaked and subsequently commented on extensively by observers prior to its introduction. Prominently, 127 civil society organisations had issued a letter disparaging the Commission’s approach as “an attempt to covertly dismantle Europe’s strongest protections against digital threats.” Alarm bells have been raised, inter alia, regarding the tracking of personal devices, a new kind of legitimate interest to serve as the legal basis for using personal data for AI training, or the relativisation of the GDPR’s transparency principle.

Other voices, including from industry pressure groups, have welcomed the package as a trajectory that would expedite innovation by essentially pulling out stops from the process of making AI tools omnipresent. No surprise there in light of the still ongoing AI boom, and continued investment in the proliferation of AI solutions.

The jury still appears to be out as to whether the AI revolution will ultimately save human civilisation, or indeed destroy it. At this moment, it is easy to be either a techno-optimist or, like many including yours truly, a concerned citizen when most of the revolution is still ahead of us—we just do not know how it will play out.

And the dilemma of legislating under extreme uncertainty will render any major regulatory change in the digital space—much like in other “progressive” compliance domains such as sustainability or supply chain transparency—ultimately a gamble. For the EU, the dilemma is not simply about innovation versus fundamental rights as the debate between industry and civil society would seem to suggest—it runs deeper.

How should we Europeans define our role and identity vis-à-vis growing competition, economic polarisation and concentration of corporate power and influence across the globe? How can we be liberal enough for our companies to remain competitive, but also regulated enough so that we don’t sacrifice our “Europeanness”, and the political–economic edge (we think) it provides?

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“Simplification” as an autonomous goal is, in my view, misguided. Our social contract is complex, our political concepts fuzzy, which, much like cookie banners, is not to everyone’s liking. But the solution to complexity is not always just to cut the Gordian Knot—it is as often to provide better operationalisation, and better explanations.

For many corporates, “simplification” will be a buzzword used to market organisational change (=downsizing) to their shareholders, or (semantically) justify it to their employees. And there are of course merits to simplifying organisation design. But policies that work well for a corporate organisation may translate very poorly to the level of societal change. Because at the end of the day, enabling corporate efficiency, as noble a goal as that is, is not a primary objective of human society.

If there was a world cup in regulatory complexity, the EU’s digital regulations would be strong contenders. But complexity is not the enemy. Instead of making it into one, legislators should be seeking to establish a better kind of complexity: one that works for the EU and addresses its innovativeness dilemma as best we can—for the moment, anyway. And then revisits it as the AI revolution progresses—or indeed devours its children.