European Commission Deploys AI Tool to Assess EU Accession Candidates

The European Commission’s Directorate‑General for Enlargement and Eastern Neighbourhood has launched an internal generative‑AI system, called GPT@EC, to evaluate whether candidate countries meet the EU’s legal standards. Developed in 2024, the tool is intended to help staff cope with a surge of accession applications driven by geopolitical instability, such as the war in Ukraine and heightened U.S.–Greenland tensions. Candidates mentioned include Moldova and Ukraine, which have begun the first accession phase, Montenegro, Albania, Georgia, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Bosnia‑Herzegovina, Serbia and Iceland, which is considering a new referendum. Commissioner Marta Kos noted that “the progress made in the past year and a half has outpaced the results of the previous fifteen years.” While the Commission highlights the efficiency gains, candidate states have warned that reliance on AI for complex legal assessments could lead to critical errors. The system is kept within EU data‑privacy safeguards and avoids external U.S. platforms, and EU institutions have banned the use of AI‑generated imagery in official communications.