Expert ethics guidelines
Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy AI
These guidelines set out that trustworthy AI should be lawful, ethical and robust, and list requirements including human agency, privacy, transparency, diversity, environmental well-being and accountability. They influenced later EU policy language but are not the AI Act. Treating the guidelines as if they were regulation misstates their legal status.
Last reviewed 2026-08-22
- Issuer
- Independent High-Level Expert Group on AI (European Commission)
- Year
- 2019
- Status
- Non-binding guidance
- Geographic scope
- European Union origin; widely cited internationally
- Intended audience
- Developers, deployers and policymakers seeking ethics requirements language
- Official source
- Official text (opens in a new tab)
Main themes
- Human agency
- Privacy
- Transparency
- Diversity
- Accountability
- Robustness