The sovereign sandbox: turning the August AI deadline into an advantage for Cyprus

By Stephanos Spyrou

Cyprus is one of Europe’s smallest nations, but for six months this year it held the gavel for the whole European Union, and used the closing days of that turn rather well: steering the Council to its own sign-off on the very AI Act simplification package that is about to decide how every business on the island handles data. Then, at the end of June, it quietly passed the gavel to Dublin and slipped back into the shorthand reserved for small places everywhere: easily...