The EU AI Act and the Rights-based Approach to Technological Governance
This addresses the problem of ensuring AI governance protects fundamental rights for EU citizens and policymakers, though it is incremental as it builds on existing regulatory frameworks.
The paper examines how the EU AI Act institutionalizes a human-centric approach by embedding fundamental rights as legal thresholds and procedural triggers in AI governance, suggesting it could serve as a model for rights-preserving systems.
The EU AI Act constitutes an important development in shaping the Union's digital regulatory architecture. The Act places fundamental rights at the heart of a risk-based governance framework. The article examines how the AI Act institutionalises a human-centric approach to AI and how the AI Act's provisions explicitly and implicitly embed the protection of rights enshrined in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. It argues that fundamental rights function not merely as aspirational goals, but as legal thresholds and procedural triggers across the lifecycle of an AI system. The analysis suggests that the AI Act has the potential to serve as a model for rights-preserving AI systems, while acknowledging that challenges will emerge at the level of implementation.