With its proposed harmonised rules on artificial intelligence, known as the EU AI Act, the European Commission is aiming to create greater trust around the use of AI by regulating the AI systems available in the EU Market. Although the act could arguably become the global gold standard for AI regulation, EU member states, such as the Netherlands and Spain, are starting to propose their own laws, demonstrating their commitment to regulating AI.

Despite not contributing to the development of the AI Act in the form of a presidency compromise text, Spain has played an active role in supporting the trial enforcement of the obligations of the Act by establishing the first regulatory sandbox to allow experiments in a controlled environment. Further demonstrating its commitment to governing AI to reduce the harms that it can pose, Spain has published a National AI Strategy and announced the launch of Europe’s First AI Supervisory Agency to oversee the implementation of the Strategy and AI Act and has targeted platform-based worker rights with its so-called Rider Law. In this blog post, we provide a high-level overview of some of the AI-relevant initiatives introduced by the Spanish Government in recent years.