Explanatory Memorandum to COM(2024)29 - Amendment of Regulation (EU) 2021/1173 as regards an EuroHPC initiative for start-ups to boost European leadership in trustworthy Artificial Intelligence - Main contents
Please note
This page contains a limited version of this dossier in the EU Monitor.
| dossier | COM(2024)29 - Amendment of Regulation (EU) 2021/1173 as regards an EuroHPC initiative for start-ups to boost European leadership in ... |
|---|---|
| source | COM(2024)29 |
| date | 24-01-2024 |
1. CONTEXT OF THE PROPOSAL
• Reasons for and objectives of the proposal
Council Regulation (EU) 2021/1173,1 repealing Council Regulation (EU) 2018/1488,2 establishes the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking and sets out its mission and objectives. The Joint Undertaking’s mission is to develop, deploy, extend and maintain in the Union a world-leading federated, secure and hyper-connected supercomputing, quantum computing, service and data infrastructure ecosystem; to support the development and uptake of demand-oriented and user-driven innovative and competitive supercomputing systems based on a supply chain that will ensure the availability of components, technologies and knowledge, limit the risk of disruption, and enable the development of a wide range of applications optimised for these systems; and to widen the use of this supercomputing infrastructure to a large number of public and private users as well as supporting the twin digital and green transitions and the development of key skills for European science and industry.
In her 2023 State of the Union Address,3 President Ursula von der Leyen announced a new initiative to make the Union’s supercomputing capacity available to innovative European startups in trustworthy artificial intelligence (AI) to train their models. These models require substantial amounts of computing power to train and finetune the most advanced foundation models in order to unlock the full potential of AI, a requirement that can be met only with supercomputing.
Given that the Union’s most powerful world-class supercomputing capacity is found in the European High Performance Computing (EuroHPC) Joint Undertaking’s (the “Joint Undertaking”) facilities, it is these facilities that will need to be made available in order for this initiative to become a reality. It is accordingly proposed to introduce a further objective for the Joint Undertaking, which will cover the contribution made by supercomputers to this new AI initiative of the Union.
This new objective will allow the Joint Undertaking to support the further development of a highly competitive and innovative AI startup and research ecosystem in Europe, including the development and uptake of European AI solution, by operating AI Factories. It will consist of deploying and operating AI dedicated supercomputers co-located with large data centres or connected to data centres via very high speed networks, enhancing the performance of these supercomputers by regularly upgrading their AI capabilities; and, providing dedicated AI oriented supercomputing services in support of the AI startup, science and innovation ecosystem for the large scale training and development of general purpose, trustworthy and ethical AI models and systems, and of AI user communities for the development, validation and running of emerging AI applications, in particular in the areas of health and care, climate change, robotics, and connected and automated driving. It will also foster a talent development pool to provide advanced education, training, skilling and reskilling activities to relevant AI stakeholders. The AI Factories will establish synergies at EU level and will cooperate with and federate other relevant Union AI initiatives, such as the Artificial Intelligence On-Demand platform, the AI Testing and Experimentation Facilities, the EuroHPC Competence Centres, the EuroHPC Centres of Excellence, and any other emerging European AI initiative. These changes will enable the Joint Undertaking to offer tailored computing power and services to nurture large-scale AI training and development and uptake in the Union, which the current Regulation does not specifically foresee.
• Consistency with existing policy provisions in the policy area
The objective of this proposal is to widen the scope of Council Regulation (EU) 2021/1173 of 13 July 2021 on establishing the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking and repealing Regulation (EU) 2018/1488 in order to enable the Union to respond to new technological developments and strategic imperatives, namely the development of AI softwares and infrastructures, and to the need to open up supercomputing technologies to startups.
• Consistency with other Union policies
This proposal is fully in line with other Union policies, especially those policies enacted under the Commission priority ‘A Europe fit for the digital age’.
2. LEGAL BASIS, SUBSIDIARITY AND PROPORTIONALITY
• Legal basis
The legal basis of the proposed amended Regulation is Article 187 and the first paragraph of Article 188 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.
• Subsidiarity
The subsidiarity principle applies insofar as the proposal does not fall under the exclusive competence of the Union.
The Council Regulation (EU) 2021/1173 complies with the subsidiarity principle as its objectives, namely the strengthening of research and innovation capabilities, the acquisition of supercomputers and quantum computers, and access to high performance computing, quantum computing and data infrastructure across the Union by means of a Joint Undertaking, cannot be sufficiently achieved by the Member States, but can rather, by reason of avoiding unnecessary duplication, retaining critical mass and ensuring that public financing is used in an optimal way, be better achieved at EU level.
The growth in the importance of HPC for science, the public and private sectors in recent years has been accompanied by an exponential rise in the level of investment required to stay globally competitive. This is exacerbated by the recent surge in cost of the accelerators that are indispensable to stay competitive at global scale for the development and training of the large Artificial Intelligence models. This has led to a widespread recognition that the provision of shared infrastructure and common use of existing capabilities would benefit the European Artificial Intelligence community in all Member States. This includes Member States that may have difficulties in creating self-sufficient national HPC infrastructures while they can make valuable contributions to and benefit from federated and interconnected EU-level HPC capabilities.
The proposed amendment will enable the Joint Undertaking to make its supercomputing capacity available to innovative European startups, in order to foster the development, testing and validation of AI solutions, to enable the large scale training and development of general purpose, trustworthy and ethical AI models and systems, thus strengthening Europe’s competitiveness and industrial base in AI. Only common action of this kind at Union level can enhance thetechnological sovereignty and Union’s economic security and leverage its tools and regulatory powers to shape global rules and standards in AI, at the same time significantly contributing to AI uptake in European industry, research and public services.
• Proportionality
The proposal complies with the principle of proportionality as set out in Article 5 of the Treaty on European Union, as it consists of an effective cooperation framework, suited to all intervention areas of this initiative, does not go beyond what is necessary to solve the problems identified and is proportionate to its objectives.
• Choice of the instrument
The creation and operation of a Joint Undertaking in which the Union participates requires a Council Regulation, to which an amendment is now being proposed.
3. RESULTS OF EX-POST EVALUATIONS, STAKEHOLDER CONSULTATIONS AND IMPACT ASSESSMENTS
Not applicable. This is an amendment to an existing Regulation, therefore, no ex-post evaluation, stakeholder consultation, or impact assessment has been performed.
4. BUDGETARY IMPLICATIONS
No additional resources will be required from the EU budget, but the proposed measures concern a redeployment of the resources available in the Joint Undertaking.
5. OTHER ELEMENTS
• Detailed explanation of the specific provisions of the proposal
The amendment to the Regulation enlarges its scope in order to introduce a further objective to the existing six objectives of the Joint Undertaking: to develop and operate the AI Factories in support of the further development of a highly competitive and innovative AI ecosystem in the Union. The inclusion of this objective is intended to address the unique considerations and requirements associated with the deployment and operation of computational systems required for the development, training and running of large scale AI models. It should be clarified that the amendment introduces a single change: the inclusion of AI Factories within the scope of the Regulation.
This is in response to the major technological and regulatory developments in the field of AI that have taken place since the original Regulation came into force in 2021.
The amendment does not affect the obligations of the Member States participating in the Joint Undertaking to comply with State aid principles. Council Regulation (EU) 2021/1173 already includes provisions in this regard: specifying in its Recital (59) that any funding from Union programmes should be consistent with State aid principles to ensure the effectiveness of public spending and prevent market distorsions; and specifying under Article 7 that the contributions from the Member States to its beneficiaries should be without prejudice to State aid rules.
In the light of these developments, the new proposed point 3b of Article 2 3b presents the definition of an AI dedicated supercomputer and point 3c of this Article presents the definition of an AI Factory. Point 9 of Article 2 is amended to include the AI dedicated supercomputers as another category of EuroHPC supercomputers. A new point h of Article 3(2) presents the Joint Undertaking’s new objective to develop and operate the AI Factories in support of the further development of a highly competitive and innovative AI ecosystem in the Union, while a new point h is added to Article 4(1) which defines the Joint Undertaking’s new AI-focused pillar of activity. Articles 9(5) point g, 10(2) point (1), 16(1) and 17(1) are also amended in this regard.
A new Article 12a covers provisions for the acquisition and ownership of AI dedicated supercomputers by the Joint Undertaking. Article 16(1b) and 16(2b) set out how these supercomputers will be used, and their access conditions.
Article 15 is adapted to provide more flexibility for upgrading the existing EuroHPC supercomputers, including with a view to enhancing their Artificial Intelligence capabilities. The original EuroHPC Article 15 was intended to permit a timely upgrade of the supercomputers to extend their capabilities or operational lifetime. This set clear limits to keep the prioritise investment in the acquisition of new supercomputers. However, it turned out that this limit did not allow to take most advantage of the existing EuroHPC supercomputers in view of maximising the return on investment. The deployment of the EuroHPC supercomputing infrastructure took a delay of up to two years because of the COVID crisis, notably due to the scarcity of microprocessors. As the EuroHPC supercomputers have not reached the end of their operational lifetime it is much more cost effective to upgrade the capabilities of the existing EuroHPC supercomputers rather than acquiring new supercomputers of sufficient computing performance.