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Academic freedom is widely acknowledged both as a fundamental value of present-day higher education and science, and as a prerequisite for well-functioning democratic societies. Yet in recent years, major concerns about the state of academic freedom in the European Union have been raised by various stakeholders. The European Parliament launched an annual EP Academic Freedom Monitor in 2022, aimed at helping to strengthen the protection of academic freedom in the European Union. This report presents ...

Ever since the early history of European universities, academic freedom has been acknowledged to be a fundamental feature of any higher education research system or institution. The emergence of the research university model in Germany in the early 1800s, highlighting the basic concepts of Lehrfreiheit and Lernfreiheit, contributed strongly to the central position of academic freedom in present-day higher education systems. Following the widespread democratisation of Europe and other parts of the ...

In recent years, there has been renewed interest in the true degree of academic freedom around the world despite international declarations, and constitutional and legal protection. This study aims to support the European Parliament's STOA Panel in developing a procedure to monitor developments in academic freedom in the EU Member States. The study provides an overview of the interpretation of academic freedom in different international declarations, and offers a critical assessment of existing evaluation ...

Biases are commonly considered one of the most detrimental effects of artificial intelligence (AI) use. The EU is therefore committed to reducing their incidence as much as possible. However, the existence of biases pre-dates the creation of AI tools. All human societies are biased – AI only reproduces what we are. Therefore, opposing this technology for this reason would simply hide discrimination and not prevent it. It is up to human supervision to use all available means – which are many – to ...

The rapid growth of genetic databases worldwide, coupled with fast-decreasing costs and the rapid pace of technological change, has increased the possibility of every human genome on Earth being sequenced this century. This raises ethical and legal questions on data privacy and ownership. While a global genetic database would revolutionise preventive medicine and research, new forms of surveillance, discrimination and power imbalances could emerge. The global interplay between the individual, the ...

Genome editing is a powerful new tool allowing precise additions, deletions and substitutions in the genome. The development of new approaches has made editing of the genome much more precise, efficient, flexible, and less expensive, relative to previous strategies. As with other medical advances, each such application comes with its own set of benefits, risks, ethical issues and societal implications, which may require new regulatory frameworks. Important questions raised with respect to genome ...

This study identifies and examines sources of regulatory divergence within the AI act regarding the obligations and limitations upon public and private sector actors when using certain AI systems. A reflection upon possible impacts and consequences is provided, and a range of policy options is suggested for the European Parliament that could respond to the identified sources of divergence. The study is specifically focused on three AI application areas: manipulative AI, social scoring and biometric ...

Automated decision-making by systems that use machine learning to dynamically improve performance are still seen as lacking the 'human perspective' and flexibility to adapt to the particular nuances of specific cases. But perhaps, as they lack the 'cunning' to hide their biases, automated systems actually make fairer decisions than do humans, when these decisions are based on data that have been properly curated.

This study describes two main dimensions of 5G technology, i.e. privacy and security. This research paper focuses on the analysis of cybersecurity risks and threats, privacy challenges and 5G technology opportunities at EU level and worldwide, as well as the relationship between cybersecurity risks and privacy issues. The methodological framework for this assessment of the impact of 5G technology is built on three pillars: (i) a document-based analysis; (ii) a parallel analysis with stakeholder involvement ...

Deepfakes are hyper-realistic media products created through artificial intelligence (AI) techniques that manipulate how people look and the things that they appear to say or do. They hit the headlines in 2018 with a deepfake video of Barack Obama, which was designed to raise awareness of their challenges. The accessibility and outputs of deepfake generation tools are improving rapidly, and their use is increasing exponentially. A wide range of malicious uses have been identified, including fraud ...