The joint project has been launched on 9 September 2024 in Lisbon, Portugal. It is co-funded by the EU and implemented by the Council of Europe in cooperation with the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Structural Reform Support as well as the equality bodies of Belgium, Finland, and Portugal. The launch event being hosted by the ‘Comissão para a Cidadania e a Igualdade de Género’, the Portuguese Commission for Citizenship and Gender Equality, the other involved equality bodies were ‘Unia’, the Belgian Interfederal Centre for Equal opportunities, and ‘Yhdenvertaisuus­valtuutettu’, the Finnish Non-Discrimination Ombudsman Office.

In light of the adoption of the EU AI Act and the Council of Europe Framework Convention on AI, two major milestones in the area of AI regulation, the joint project intends to strengthen the capacities of equality bodies to supervise the use of AI in public administration and to provide redress or compensation for users that have been discriminated against by these AI systems.

By developing trainings, guidelines, and best practices and promoting the exchange of knowledge on national and European level, the project empowers and equips equality bodies and regulators to prevent and regulate discrimination by AI technologies based on sex, racial or ethnic origin, religion or beliefs, disability, age or sexual orientation. The project’s objective is in line with European standards and instruments, such as the EU AI Act which requires specific safeguard procedures to be put in place to ensure adequate and timely enforcement against AI systems presenting a risk to health, safety and fundamental rights.

It is the EU’s and Council of Europe’s first multi-country project on AI and discrimination and is set out to run for a duration of two years, from September 2024 to August 2026.

While the first event in September focussed on the Portuguese component of the project and allowed Portuguese stakeholders to discuss their involvement in the two-year project, the next meeting will be held in December in Brussels, Belgium to focus on the Belgian component. In January 2025, the project partners will gather in Helsinki, Finland for the Finnish component and for a discussion of the results of the consolidated gap analysis for the three countries.

Learn about the EU signing the Council of Europe Framework Convention on AI