Verbatim report of proceedings

Wednesday, 15 February 2017 - Strasbourg

Civil Law Rules on Robotics (debate)

  Marju Lauristin (S&D). – Madam President, I want to start mainly from the opposite position compared to the previous speaker. I think that maybe as this report is so systemic, so comprehensive in all of this area, it is showing us how many unsolved issues, new ideas and new concepts we clearly need in order to come to very specific implementation as the legislation.

I am also very glad that Commissioner Moedas, who is responsible for research, is here because this report also shows that there is an area of research which is most vital and which is underdeveloped – the area of research dealing with technology-society interactions. We have neurosciences dealing with this interaction at a micro level, but we have very little research dealing with technology-society interaction at the macro and middle level.

I insist that the Commission really should do what the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection is also proposing: to have special grants, money and focus in research on this horizontal, comprehensive, holistic approach uniting humanities, social sciences, technological sciences and real sciences.