Brussels Hopes AI Can Finally Explain Brussels’ Paperwork
After years of adding forms, Europe has discovered a bold new administrative shortcut: asking a machine to fill them in while everyone watches.
BRUSSELS, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has proposed using artificial intelligence to simplify administrative procedures and cut reporting requirements for European businesses. The continent’s paperwork professionals responded with cautious celebration.
Brussels has accumulated so many reporting requirements that some businesses must now report how long they spent reporting, whether that report arrived on time, and whether the person filing it had filed notice of their intention to file.
Officials at the fictional Directorate for Administrative Tidiness said companies would submit one concise report explaining why they had failed to submit the other 47 reports on the same subject. AI would shorten it. A committee would then expand it into a report of suitable European length.
“We are replacing paperwork with supervision of a machine that read the paperwork.”
“We are replacing the burden of paperwork with the burden of supervising a machine that has read the paperwork,” said Milo Vercingetorix, deputy assistant coordinator for the Digital Reduction of Forms at the invented Directorate. “This is considerably more efficient because the machine does not require lunch.”
The system is expected to process administrative documents quickly, especially those containing phrases such as “in accordance with the relevant framework” and “subject to further guidance”. It will also look for ways to reduce reporting by putting several forms inside one larger form. Historians already know this as the nesting-doll approach to governance.
Businesses welcomed the principle, then asked whether they would still need to report their use of the AI, the AI’s electricity use, the origin of that electricity, and whether the software felt adequately consulted. A man standing near a printer said the safest assumption was yes.
The pilot demonstration took place entirely on a whiteboard. The AI found the central problem at once: too many forms. It then produced a 38-page assessment, including an executive summary, a stakeholder map and a box asking someone to confirm that the assessment had been received.
Companies would spend less time completing paperwork and more time explaining to software why the paperwork should be shorter. If the plan succeeds, reporting requirements may eventually shrink to one annual question: “Did anything happen?” Businesses would have 90 days to answer in triplicate.