Algorithmic Administration and the EU AI Act: Legal Principles for Public Sector Use of AI
For legal scholars and policymakers, this work addresses the gap between AI regulation and administrative law, but it is an incremental analysis without empirical results.
This article examines how the EU AI Act interacts with administrative law principles such as discretion, duty to state reasons, and proportionality, focusing on public sector use of high-risk AI systems. It proposes safeguards and interpretative strategies to ensure ethical and lawful deployment.
The increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) by public authorities introduces both opportunities for innovation and significant challenges for the administrative rule of law. This article examines how the EU AI Act interacts with the fundamental principles of administrative law, with a particular focus on administrative discretion, the duty to state reasons, and proportionality. It analyses the regulatory obligations imposed by the AI Act on public sector deployers of high-risk systems, especially in sensitive domains such as social benefits, migration, education, and law enforcement. It also explores whether the AI Act adequately ensures accountability, transparency, and reviewability in automated public decision-making. The article further considers how the AI Act's risk-based approach aligns (or fails to align) with the principle of proportionality and it proposes safeguards and interpretative strategies to ensure the ethical and lawful deployment of AI in the public sector.