European Union

European lawmakers came a step closer to passing new rules regulating artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT, following a crunch vote on Thursday where they agreed tougher draft legislation, Reuters reported. The European Union's highly anticipated AI Act looks set to be the world's first comprehensive legislation governing the technology, with new rules around the use of facial recognition, biometric surveillance, and other AI applications.

A European judicial team questioned on Thursday the brother of Lebanon’s embattled Central Bank governor who is is being investigated abroad over several financial crimes and the laundering of some $330 million, the Associated Press reported. The questioning is part of a probe by a delegation from France, Germany, and Luxembourg, which is now on its third visit to Lebanon to interrogate suspects and witnesses in the case. The delegation questioned Gov.

A European judicial team pressed on with its corruption probe of Lebanon's embattled Central Bank governor on Thursday, questioning one of his aides and summoning his brother for another hearing next week, the Associated Press reported. The delegation from France, Germany, and Luxembourg is on its third visit to Lebanon to interrogate suspects and witnesses in an ongoing investigation of Gov. Riad Salameh and associates over several financial crimes and the laundering of some $330 million.

The European Union is set to propose a ban on many goods from transiting through Russia as the bloc attempts to tighten the screws on the enforcement of sanctions imposed over the past year, Bloomberg News reported. he transit ban would extend to numerous technologies and other goods, including several types of vehicles, but not all items would be barred from traveling via Russia en route to third countries. The ban would be part of a new package of sanctions that’s being prepared by the European Commission. Moscow has been able to get around restrictions on several sanctioned technologies.

The European Parliament on Thursday overwhelmingly backed the European Union's first set of rules to regulate cryptoasset markets, Reuters reported. Parliament voted by 517 in favour and 38 against to approve the world's first comprehensive set of regulations for issuing and trading cryptoassets such as bitcoin. "This regulation brings a competitive advantage for the EU," said Stefan Berger, the lawmaker who steered the rules through parliament. "The European crypto-asset industry has regulatory clarity that does not exist in countries like the U.S.," Berger said.

The European Union on Tuesday proposed making it harder for states to pour billions of euros of aid into an ailing bank, as Italy did with Monte dei Paschi di Siena six years ago, Reuters reported. Proposals from the EU's executive seek to ensure that banks hold enough resources, in particular debt that can be written down to release cash in a crisis, to avoid taxpayer handouts. The recent collapses in the United States of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank and the forced takeover of Credit Suisse by UBS last month were a reminder that failures still occur.

The European Union was closing in Tuesday on approval for a plan to ramp up semiconductor production as it seeks to wean itself off reliance on Asia for the tiny computer chips that control everything from cars to washing machines, the Associated Press reported. The European Parliament and the bloc's 27 member states struck an informal agreement for the 43 billion-euro ($47 billion) Chips Act, which pools public and private funds and allows for state aid to kick-start massive investments for chipmaking facilities.

Stock exchanges and asset managers have squared off ahead of European Union negotiations this week over how much information investors should be given to find the best deals on Europe's fragmented stock markets, Reuters reported. The European Parliament and EU states begin negotiations on Tuesday on finalising reform of the bloc's securities rules, known as MiFID, aimed at making its capital market more efficient now that if faces competition from a post-Brexit London.

European Union lawmakers want to give regulators new powers to govern the development of technologies like those behind ChatGPT, the biggest push so far in the West to curb one of the hottest areas in artificial intelligence, the Wall Street Journal reported. The breakneck pace of AI development in recent months requires a new set of rules tailored to powerful, general-purpose AI tools, a group of influential EU lawmakers say in an open letter they plan to publish Monday.

The European Union is determined to scrap the draconian fiscal rules of the past blamed for choking economies in the aftermath of the previous financial crisis despite Germany’s call for strict limits to reduce public expenditure, Bloomberg News reported. “Clearly we are not getting back to the 1/20th rule” that forced member states to implement severe adjustments to their public debt levels, European Commission Valdis Dombrovskis said in an interview Friday the sidelines of the spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund in Washington.