European Union officials are readying to sacrifice some of their most prized privacy rules for the sake of AI, as they move to amp up business in Europe by cutting red tape. 

The proposed overhaul will come as a boon to businesses working with AI, as Europe scrambles to stay economically competitive on the world stage.

The European Commission will unveil a “digital omnibus” package later this month to simplify many of its tech laws. The executive has insisted that it is only trimming excess fat through “targeted” amendments, but draft documents show that officials are planning far-reaching changes to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to the benefit of artificial intelligence developers.  

But altering the flagship privacy law — believed to be the “third rail” of EU tech policy — is likely to create a political and lobbying storm in Brussels.

“Is this the end of data protection and privacy as we have signed it into the EU treaty and fundamental rights charter?” said German politician Jan Philipp Albrecht, who as a former European Parliament member was one of the chief architects of the GDPR. “The Commission should be fully aware that this is undermining European standards dramatically.”

Brussels’ shift on privacy comes as it frets over Europe’s waning economic power. Former Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi namechecked the General Data Protection Regulation as holding back European innovation on artificial intelligence in his landmark competitiveness report last year.

European privacy regulators have already been spoiling Big Tech’s AI party in recent years. Meta, X and LinkedIn have all delayed rollouts of artificial intelligence applications in Europe after interventions by the Irish Data Protection Commission. Google is facing an inquiry by the same regulator and was previously forced to pause the release of its Bard chatbot. Italy’s regulator has previously imposed temporary blocks on OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Chinese DeepSeek over privacy concerns.

Those same tech giants are racing ahead in the U.S., without an equivalent blanket privacy law barring them from feeding AI with citizens’ data.

Over the past few months, Commission officials have sought to preempt worries that it was overhauling the privacy rulebook. It insisted that its simplification proposals wouldn’t touch the underlying principles of the GDPR. 

Now that draft plans are known, civil society campaigners have begun raising the alarm.

The Commission is “secretly trying to overrun everyone else in Brussels,” said Max Schrems, founder of Austrian privacy group Noyb — and Europe’s infamous privacy campaigner who was behind court cases that brought down major data transfer deals with the United States in the past. “This disregards every rule on good lawmaking, with terrible results,” he said.

One line of attack from privacy groups is to poke holes in what they say is a rushed omnibus process. While the GDPR took years to negotiate, public consultation on the digital omnibus only ended in October. The Commission has not prepared impact assessments to accompany its proposals, as it says the changes are only targeted and technical.

The Commission’s tunnel vision on the AI race has resulted in a “poorly drafted ‘quick shot’ in a highly complex and sensitive area,” said Schrems.

Estonia, France, Austria and Slovenia are firmly against any rewrite of the General Data Protection Regulation. Germany — usually seen as one of the most privacy-minded countries — on the other hand is pushing for big changes to help AI.

In the European Parliament, the issue is expected to divide groups. Czech Greens lawmaker Markéta Gregorová said she is “surprised and concerned” that the GDPR is being reopened. She warned that Europeans’ fundamental rights “must carry more weight than financial interests.” 

But Finnish center-right lawmaker Aura Salla — who previously led Meta’s Brussels lobbying office — said she would “warmly” welcome the proposal “if done correctly,” as it could bring legal certainty for AI companies. Salla emphasized that the Commission will have to “ensure it is European researchers and companies, not just third country giants that gain a competitive edge from our own rules.”