The Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Michael O’Flaherty, has issued his Chair’s Notes on AI governance following a consultation with civil society organisations.
During the consultation, held on 6 and 7 November 2025, participants sounded the alarm on the simplification of AI rules and warned that a surge in tech industry lobbying, coupled with a severe funding crisis for civil society, is creating a dangerous imbalance that threatens the protection of human rights in AI.
In the report from the consultation, entitled Governing generative AI: closing the gaps to protect human rights, the Commissioner highlights the risks stemming from a significant push to roll back regulations in the name of competitiveness.
“If not handled with care, it risks sending a disastrous message that human rights are secondary to deregulation”, said the Commissioner. “Simplification must not mean the removal of safeguards”.
The report identifies critical gaps in Europe’s current regulatory framework, specifically regarding the deployment of generative AI. Among the primary findings:
- Automated systems, especially in security and military contexts, must be subject to meaningful human oversight due to the high risk they pose to human rights.
- AI-scaled disinformation is flooding and degrading information environments, with particularly harmful consequences for children, migrants, women and LGBTI people.
- A shift to default opt-in consent models would ensure greater user control over personal data. In this context, the report warns against policy updates that integrate AI into existing products without explicit user consent.
- The environmental and societal impacts of AI should form an integral part of policy discussions.
- Authorities are urged to mandate safety-by-design for all AI products used by children and to prohibit AI uses that carry a serious risk of human rights violations.
“While millions are being spent to push for deregulation, the organisations tasked with protecting the public interest are being defunded. Consistent enforcement of existing regulatory instruments, such as the GDPR, the DSA and the EU AI Act, should not be seen as a burden: it is a prerequisite for trust in our increasingly digital society,” said the Commissioner.
Recommendations for action
The report identifies 4 key areas of action:
- Ensure meaningful, funded participation of civil society in AI decision-making to provide checks and balances.
- Grant independent researchers, journalists and civil society organisations access to the data used by AI systems and strengthen transparency in public procurement.
- Adequately fund national human rights structures and oversight authorities to match the technical scale of AI and ensure enforcement of existing EU digital regulations.
- Scale up investment in digital literacy and human rights compliance.