The European Union is an international organization in Europe. An understanding of how the European Union works and its effects on the world can be relevant to various problems of interest in the effective altruism community, and some members of the community have proposed interventions focused on influencing the European Union. For example, the Brussels effect may be an important consideration for AI governance efforts, and influencing certain EU regulations may be a cost-effective farmed animal welfare intervention.^[1]

Further reading

Aird, Michael (2022) Collection of work on whether/how much people should focus on the EU if they’re interested in AI governance for longtermist/x-risk reasons, Effective Altruism Forum, February 11.

Simonin, Denis & Andrea Gavinelli (2019) The European Union legislation on animal welfare: state of play, enforcement and future activities, in Sophie Hild & Louis Schweitzer (eds.) Animal Welfare: From Science to Law, Paris: Fondation Droit Animal, pp. 59–70.

Stix, Charlotte (2022) The ghost of AI governance past, present and future: AI governance in the European Union, in Justin Bullock & Valerie Hudson (eds.) The Oxford Handbook on AI Governance, Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming.

Related entries

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Wikipedia (2018) Brussels effect, Wikipedia, May 17 (updated 25 April 2021‎).