A EUROPEAN APPROACH TO ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: BETWEEN GEO-ECONOMIC AMBITIONS AND THE REVIVAL OF THE NORMATIVE POWER EUROPE THEORY

Abstract

With the entry into force of the European Artificial Intelligence Act in August 2024, the European Union (EU) became the first in the world to establish a comprehensive regulatory framework for this advanced technology. The tension between the two leading goals of the newely established European governance model has been highlighted in the European studies. On the one hand, the Union seeks to protect fundamental rights and ethical principles and consider transparency requirements. On the other hand, it has focused on fostering innovation and strengthening the European technology sector. The paper analyzes the European approach to regulating artificial intelligence technology through the prism of the theoretical concept of the normative power of the European Union. The research is placed in the context of a global geopolitical and geoeconomic shift. The paper aims to examine whether the Artificial Intelligence Act reflects the EU’s value-based approach on the global stage, or whether it indicates the instrumentalization of rights in the function of achieving strategic autonomy and digital sovereignty of the EU as a supranational entity. Qualitative content analysis shows that the EU seeks to balance the protection of fundamental rights with the need for global positioning in the domain of advanced technologies. It is concluded that the European approach to artificial intelligence is neither exclusively normative nor exclusively geoeconomic. It embodies a new phase of the transformation of the European Union as an actor in a world where technological progress is intertwined with the logic of power, rather than human-centric social progress.