21/05/2026 Political Affairs and Democracy
PACE Committee on Political Affairs and Democracy has adopted a draft report stressing that artificial intelligence (AI) brings both major opportunities and serious risks for democratic systems, while warning that “efforts to ensure that AI systems are safe and regulated by democratic governance frameworks are falling short of keeping up with the pace of innovation.”
The draft report, prepared by Deborah Bergamini (Italy, EPP/CD), underlines that “AI may represent the most transformative revolution in human history,” while expressing “deep concern about the potentially disruptive impact of AI on democracy in Europe and beyond.”
At the same time, the committee emphasises that AI “should not be demonised,” noting that with appropriate governance frameworks it “can be instrumental in innovating democratic systems” and can help strengthen “democratic processes and institutions,” including by facilitating public participation, access to information and deliberative democracy.
The draft report highlights both positive and negative impacts. On the one hand, AI can “promote inclusiveness by eliminating socio-economic barriers” and improve access “to public services, education and employment opportunities.” On the other hand, it warns that the technology “relies on large datasets to train its systems and produce outputs,” and therefore this “can be exploited by malevolent individuals, companies or governments, for mass surveillance purposes, predictive policing, risk and social scoring, and censoring political opinions.”
The committee also cautions that “datasets used to train AI systems can be polluted by politically-based disinformation content,” or contain biases that could “lead to ill-informed decisions or discrimination against certain groups, such as women or minorities,” while “AI systems can sometimes 'hallucinate', generating incomplete or misleading information.”
The committee urges member and observer states to ratify the Council of Europe Framework Convention on Artificial Intelligence and Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law, and calls for stronger safeguards against misuse of AI, including disinformation and foreign interference.