The EU AI Act and the Rights-based Approach to Technological Governance

2026-03-24

AI Summary

This study examines how fundamental rights enshrined in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union can be effectively embedded and safeguarded within artificial intelligence governance. Through legal textual analysis, institutional framework assessment, and rights impact evaluation, the research demonstrates that the EU Artificial Intelligence Act’s risk-based regulatory framework treats fundamental rights not merely as normative values but as legally binding threshold conditions and procedural triggers throughout the entire AI system lifecycle. The work offers the first systematic account of the dual normative and procedural functions of fundamental rights in AI governance, proposing a “rights-centric” regulatory paradigm. It highlights the Act’s potential to serve as a global model for rights-protective AI regulation while identifying key challenges to its effective implementation.

Technology Category

• Philosophy and Ethics of AI: AI & Law, Justice, Regulation & Governance
• Humans and AI: AI for Accessibility
• Machine Learning: Ethics, Bias, and Fairness

Application Category

• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Fairness and ethical considerations in crowd work and in human-in-the-loop AI systems
• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Applied ML and AI for Web-based mobile applications

Abstract

The EU AI Act constitutes an important development in shaping the Union's digital regulatory architecture. The Act places fundamental rights at the heart of a risk-based governance framework. The article examines how the AI Act institutionalises a human-centric approach to AI and how the AI Act's provisions explicitly and implicitly embed the protection of rights enshrined in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. It argues that fundamental rights function not merely as aspirational goals, but as legal thresholds and procedural triggers across the lifecycle of an AI system. The analysis suggests that the AI Act has the potential to serve as a model for rights-preserving AI systems, while acknowledging that challenges will emerge at the level of implementation.

Problem

• AI governance
• fundamental rights
• EU AI Act
• human-centric AI
• technological regulation

Innovation

• EU AI Act
• fundamental rights
• risk-based governance
• human-centric AI
• technological governance