BRUSSELS — A fresh proposal by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to reform digital laws on Wednesday was welcomed by lawmakers on the right but shunned on the left.

It signals a possible repeat of a pivotal parliamentary clash last week in which von der Leyen’s center-right European People’s Party sided with the far right to pass her first omnibus proposal on green rules — sidelining the centrist coalition that voted the Commission president into office last year.

The EU executive on Wednesday presented plans to overhaul everything from its flagship General Data Protection Regulation to data rules and its fledgling Artificial Intelligence Act. The reforms aim to help businesses using data and AI, in an effort to catch up with the United States, China and other regions in the global tech race.

Drafts of the plans obtained by POLITICO caused an uproar in Brussels in the past two weeks, as everyone from liberal to left-leaning political groups and privacy-minded national governments rang the alarm.

Von der Leyen sought to extend an olive branch with last-minute tweaks to her proposal, but she’s still a long way away from center-left groups. The Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, Greens and The Left all slamming the plans in recent days.

Tom Vandendriessche, a Belgian member of the far-right Patriots for Europe group, said the GDPR is not “untouchable,” and that there needs to be simplification “to ensure our European companies can compete again.” He added: “If EPP supports that course, we’re happy to collaborate on that.”

Charlie Weimers a Swedish member of the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists, welcomed the plan for “cleaning up overlapping data rules, cutting double reporting and finally tackling the cookie banner circus.” Weimers argued von der Leyen could go further, saying it falls short of being “the regulatory U-turn the EU actually needs” to catch up in the AI race.

Those early rapprochements on the right are what Europe’s centrists and left fear most.

The digital omnibus “should not be a repetition of omnibus one,” German Greens lawmaker Sergey Lagodinsky told reporters on Wednesday. Lagodinsky warned EPP leader Manfred Weber that “there should be no games with anti-democratic and anti-European parties.”

Big reforms, small concessions

The Commission’s double-decker digital omnibus package includes one plan to simplify the EU’s data-related laws (including the GDPR as well as rules for nonpersonal data), and another specifically targeting the AI Act.

A Commission official, briefing reporters without being authorized to speak on the record, said the omnibus’ impact on the GDPR was subject to “intense discussion” internally in the run up to Wednesday’s presentation, after its rough reception from some parliament groups and privacy organizations.

Much in the EU executive’s final text remained unchanged. Among the proposals, the Commission wants to insert an affirmation into the GDPR that AI developers can rely on their “legitimate interest” to legally process Europeans’ data. That would give AI companies more confidence that they don’t always have to ask for consent.

It also wants to change the definition of personal data in the GDPR to allow pseudonymized data — where a person’s details have been obscured so they can’t be identified — to be more easily processed.

The omnibus proposals also aim to reduce the number of cookie banners that crop up across Europe’s internet.

To assuage privacy concerns, Commission officials scrapped a hotly contested clause that would have redefined what is considered “special category” data, like a person’s religious or political beliefs, ethnicity or health data, which are afforded extra protections under the GDPR.

The new cookie provision will also contain an explicit statement that website and app operators still need to get consent to access information on people’s devices.

Seeking political support

The final texts will now be scrutinized by the Parliament and Council of the European Union.

Von der Leyen’s center-right EPP welcomed the digital simplification plans as a “a critical boost for Europe’s industrial competitiveness.”

Parliament’s group of center-left Socialists and Democrats came out critical of the reforms. Birgit Sippel, a prominent German member of the group, said in a statement the Commission “wants to undermine its own standards of protection in the area of data protection and privacy in order to facilitate data use, surveillance, and AI tools ‘made in the U.S.’”

On the EPP’s immediate left, the liberal Renew group cited “important concerns” about the final texts but said it was “delighted” that the Commission backtracked on changing the definition of sensitive data, one idea in the leaked drafts that triggered a backlash. Renew said it would “support changes in the digital omnibus that will make life easier for our European companies.”

If von der Leyen goes looking for votes for her digital omnibus among far-right groups, she will find support but it might not be a united front.

German lawmaker Christine Anderson of the Alternative for Germany party, part of the far-right Europe of Sovereign Nations group, warned the digital omnibus could end up boosting “the ability to track and profile people.”

Weaker privacy rules would “enable enhanced surveillance architecture,” she said, adding her party had “always opposed” such changes. “On these issues, we find ourselves much closer to the groups on the left in the Parliament,” she said.

Pieter Haeck contributed reporting.