Bitkom welcomes the European Commission’s initiative to issue a Standardisation Request (SR) in support of safe and trustworthy artificial intelligence (AI) early in the process and in parallel to the finalisation of the AI Act in the European Parliament and the Council. This will help to ensure that the required standardisation activities will get started early and we hope it will eventually help to support the timely availability of harmonised European standards that are ready for citation and thus available in time for presumption of conformity.
However, Bitkom is highly concerned about the fact that one of the three European Standardisation Organisations recognised in Regulation 1025/2012, ETSI, the European Telecommunications Standardisation Institute, is excluded from this Standardisation Request. Bitkom believes that this will have very negative consequences for a major part of European industry and their move towards adopting AI technologies.