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Our current tax code favors machines over people. Governments roll out the red carpet for data centres that clear forests and burn gas and obtain water from stressed local supplies, to please a handful of powerful firms. But things can change. A new white paper by 17 researchers says the EU and the UK hold the levers to reign in AI.
BRIGHTON, BERLIN and BRUSSELS, [Oct 27, 2026]. On 20 November, António Costa and Ursula von der Leyen host Prime Minister Andy Burnham in Brussels for the second EU-UK summit. The announced agenda covers defence, energy, agrifood rules, climate and migration. Despite recent reports of AI agents breaking out of their test and environments and more than 1,100 industry employees asking governments for brakes, Artificial Intelligence is not on the table.
A new white paper published by researchers from the universities of Sussex, Cambridge, Bologna, Macerata and Innsbruck, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, the Max Planck Society, the Hasso Plattner Institute, the German Environment Agency and civil society argues that the time for AI regulation is now, and that the EU and the UK must take the lead. The paper specifies thirteen rules that EU and UK governments should advance.
“The AI debate is around safety, and the white paper agrees that redlines on models must be established and liability of their publishing companies enforced. However, this overlooks the fact that that the most widespread harms of AI are fiscal and physical, and that AI companies are already harming people,” says Jochen Büttner, coauthor from the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology.
A Tax Code that Favors People over Machines
Tax systems were built for an economy in which value comes from wages. In the United States, effective tax rates are 25.5% to 33.5% on labor and about 5% on equipment and software. Across the OECD, labor supplies about 57% of tax revenue and capital about 19%. When a company replaces people with software, it cuts wages and tax bills and the public purse loses twice: in revenue and in the cost of supporting displaced workers. The exposure is large. The International Labour Organization estimates that one in four jobs worldwide, and 34% in high-income countries, is in an occupation exposed to generative AI. The white paper proposes to end tax rules that favor automation over employment, to introduce a usage-based levy on compute, and to return part of the value of appropriated data to the public.
"The fiscal base is shifting from labor to capital faster than tax authorities can follow,” says Jürgen Renn, another coauthor from the MPI of Geoanthropology. “Without reform, AI will be paid for by cuts to the services that cushion the AI generated unemployment and job insecurity."
Make Technology Green Again
Digital technology once promised dematerialisation: less paper, fewer journeys, smarter grids. The AI boom goes the opposite direction. On 6 October, a Finnish agency ordered Google's local subsidiary to halt work at two data-centre sites after about 300 hectares of forest had been cleared without permission. In the United States, xAI runs about 1.5 GW of gas turbines in Memphis, Meta has committed to ten gas-fired plants for its Louisiana campus, and 59 data-centre projects have announced some 90 GW of onsite generation built on gas turbines and engines. In Spain, two thirds of data centres have water demand exceeding local supply in parts of the year. The International Energy Agency reports that data-centre electricity demand rose 17% in 2025, against 3% for electricity demand overall. The UK is accelerating consent for data centres in AI Growth Zones without binding conditions on efficiency, water or waste heat. It is unclear why big tech gets away where local European companies always had been regulated for.
To that end, the paper proposes that AI’s environmental footprint be disclosed and published across its full life cycle, from mine to landfill, by model providers and data-centre operators alike. Further, a new data centre should face a public consent test like a new airport runway, and be permitted only if newly built renewable generation, procured by the operator itself, covers its demand, so that AI adds clean capacity instead of running on gas. Authorities should be able to withhold consent where the environmental impact cannot be assessed with reasonable confidence.
Europe has the Levers
The EU and the UK together account for roughly a quarter of global AI demand. The Brussels’ effect shows that conditions attached to the common European market tend to become global corporate standards. But the supply side of the equation matters too. Every leading-edge AI chip is printed with lithography made only by ASML in the Netherlands, optics provided by Carl Zeiss. Since 2 August, the European Commission has held enforcement powers over general-purpose AI models. On 21 September, it opened a consultation on minimum performance standards for data centres. The white paper argues that the EU already has the legislative backbone and now must strengthen it in collaboration with the UK.
"Europe discusses AI as if the only question were safety in Silicon Valley," says Felix Creutzig, lead author, of the Bennett Institute at the University of Sussex. "The harm closer to home is a tax system that rewards replacing people with software, and a digital sector that used to be green and is turning black, with forests cleared in Finland and gas turbines in Memphis. The 20 November summit is the opportunity to put the rules on the table."
The paper proposes an overarching licence to operate for general-purpose AI in both EU and the UK, in addition to twelve substantive rules across democracy, labor and equity, planetary health and safety. The authors call on EU and UK leaders to add AI to the summit declaration, to agree a joint licence to operate, and to carry common standards for data centres and taxation into the UK's G20 presidency in 2027.
The "Key Rules and the Laws to Use" are to be found with the following link - https://www.gea.mpg.de/246643/put-ai-on-the-table-in-brussels?c=192964
The paper. Creutzig, F. et al., Thirteen Rules for Advancing AI Regulation in Europe, white paper, version of 14 September 2026, Coll, Falmer and Berlin. Available at https://bennettinstitutesussex.org/stories/new-bennett-led-report-sets-out-thirt.... It proposes one overarching rule, twelve substantive rules and an implementation rule, each labelled by instrument maturity (established, emerging, exploratory) and by expected severity of the risk addressed, drawn from a Delphi study of 272 experts (Saeri et al., MIT FutureTech, 2026).
Process. The rules were developed from 14 proposals submitted online between May and July 2026 and two workshops on 25 June and 21 July 2026, and refined over 42 drafts.
Contributors. Felix Creutzig (Bennett Institute, University of Sussex, and Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research); Matthew Agarwala (Bennett Institute, University of Sussex); Jochen Büttner (Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology); Jobst Heitzig (Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Zuse Institute Berlin); Carolin Kemper (Hasso Plattner Institute); Matthias C. Kettemann (Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, Berlin, and University of Innsbruck); Michael Luck (University of Sussex); Dirk Messner (German Environment Agency, UBA); Daria Onitiu (Hasso Plattner Institute and Oxford Internet Institute); Jürgen Renn (Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology); Giovanni Sartor (University of Bologna); Shumaila H. Shahani (Tech Global Institute); Benjamin Sovacool (Bennett Institute, University of Sussex); Matthias Spielkamp (AlgorithmWatch); Simona Tiribelli (University of Macerata); Sander van der Linden (University of Cambridge); Dominic Watters (University of Sussex). Contributors sign in a personal capacity.
Related work. Creutzig, F. et al., Governing artificial intelligence for planetary health, Lancet Planetary Health 10, 101408 (2026).
Jürgen Renn
Director - Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology
rennoffice@gea.mpg.de
Jochen Büttner
Senior Scientist - Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology
buettner@gea.mpg.de
Felix Creutzig; Matthew Agarwala; Jochen Büttner; Jobst Heitzig; Carolin Kemper; Matthias C. Kettemann; Michael Luck; Dirk Messner; Daria Onitiu; Jürgen Renn; Giovanni Sartor; Shumaila H. Shahani; Benjamin Sovacool; Matthias Spielkamp; Simona Tiribelli; Sander van der Linden; Dominic Watters
Thirteen Rules for Advancing AI Regulation in Europe
Bennett Institute Sussex
https://Key Rules and the Laws to Use - https://www.gea.mpg.de/246643/put-ai-on-the-table-in-brussels?c=192964
Plenary Hall of the European Parliament in Brussels
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