European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen built her reputation on holding Big Tech accountable. 

The European Union’s AI Act – the world’s first comprehensive legislative framework overseeing artificial intelligence – is seen as a flagship accomplishment for the president of the commission, politically independent executive arm of the European Union. Von der Leyen has repeatedly called on the U.S. to join the European Union to jointly fight what she called “the darker sides of the digital world.”

And under von der Leyen’s leadership, the commission has fined tech giants, mostly from the U.S., more than $7 billion over two years for various abuses of EU statutes.

“All companies doing business in the EU are accountable to the European people and should respect the rules meant to protect them,” von der Leyen’s spokesperson said in April.  

But now von der Leyen is gaining headlines for her appointment of 60-year-old Jim Hagemann Snabe, the Danish-born chairman of German engineering powerhouse Siemens, as her top advisrr on industrial AI. The appointment came after Siemens spent months successfully lobbying to exempt itself from the AI Act’s rulebook. 

“Appointing Siemens’ chairman after Siemens legitimately but fiercely lobbied to weaken the AI Act sends the wrong political signal,” said Brando Benifei, the EU parliament’s top AI negotiator.

Other critics went further.

“It’s hard to imagine a more obvious conflict of interest,” said Bram Vranken of the Corporate Europe Observatory, a corporate governance advocacy group, when the appointment was revealed. 

It’s not the first time the commission under von der Leyen has faced a backlash for its appointments for key advisory roles. But the case involving Snabe is more high profile than previous controversies, and it comes as the European Union is casting itself as a leader laying out a blueprint for AI-related regulation. 

“Our AI Act will make a substantial contribution to the development of global rules and principles for human-centric AI,” von der Leyen has said. 

Snabe will play a key role in that, advising the Commission on Ai infrastructure, data centers, semiconductor supply chains, and broad questions about how Europe should accelerate AI adoption – all areas Siemens and other companies have lobbied to reshape.

The commission has said it assessed Snabe’s appointment and found no conflict of interest between his advisory role and his professional obligations. 

According to reports, Snabe will recluse himself from taking new advisory or corporate board positions that could call into question his objectivity, including the decision to step down from the boards of Google Cloud’s European wing and the U.S. enterprise AI firm C3.ai.

But Snabe’s new position is not required to follow the same transparency rules that lobbyists and company representatives must obey when meeting with von der Leyen and other commissioner-level officers. Snabe’s final advisory report will be made public, the commission says, but the conversations that help shape it will not be.