Dozens of European Parliament lawmakers have pressed the European Commission for more details on the appointment of Siemens chair Jim Hagemann Snabe as the Commission’s AI envoy, citing conflict-of-interest concerns.
Forty lawmakers, mainly from the Greens, Socialists & Democrats, Renew and The Left, asked for the “mandate, selection and conflict-of-interest assessment” behind the appointment of the chair of Siemens’ supervisory board as the Commission’s special adviser on industrial AI applications.
“Steering Europe’s industrial AI policy is entrusted to one company’s chairman, weeks after the AI omnibus dealt with the topic, while the ‘thorough assessment’ the Commission cites stays hidden,” a set of written questions seen by POLITICO reads.
No member of the center-right European People’s Party attached their name to the questions. Hagemann Snabe will report to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and tech chief Henna Virkkunen, both of whom are EPP.
Siemens played a prominent role in a push to exempt industrial AI applications from the scope of the bloc’s flagship AI law, the AI Act, as part of a recently concluded omnibus simplification procedure.
Last week, the European Commission defended the appointment, saying a conflict-of-interest assessment had been carried out and that Hagemann Snabe would recuse himself from roles at Google Cloud and C3.ai. He will continue to be the chair of Siemens.
Italian Social Democrat Brando Benifei, the Parliament’s lead lawmaker on AI, slammed the appointment as the “wrong political signal.”