Columbia Law Publishes 'Towards a European Quantum Act' Study by Mauritz Kop
In a landmark academic contribution, Columbia Law School’s prestigious Columbia Journal of European Law (CJEL) is publishing a comprehensive study by Mauritz Kop, a leading scholar in the field of quantum technology governance. Titled "Towards a European Quantum Act: A Two-Pillar Framework for Regulation and Innovation," the paper, published in Volume 31, Issue 1 (Fall 2025), presents a forward-looking and robust framework for the European Union to navigate the complexities of the quantum age. This timely publication in a top ranked journal guided by the intellectual stewardship of renowned Columbia Law professors Anu Bradford and George Bermann, is set to significantly influence the burgeoning transatlantic dialogue on the future of quantum technology.
The full citation for the paper is: Mauritz Kop – Towards a European Quantum Act: A Two-Pillar Framework for Regulation and Innovation (Sept 9, 2025), Volume 31, Issue No. 1, Columbia Journal of European Law, Columbia Law School (2025), final edition forthcoming. Pre-print versions are available on SSRN, arXiv, ResearchGate, the Website of the European Commission, and AIRecht.
Columbia Law Publishes 'Towards a European Quantum Act' Study by Mauritz Kop.
The Columbia Journal of European Law: A Bastion of Transatlantic Legal Scholarship
Founded in 1994, the Columbia Journal of European Law has established itself as a leading academic publication dedicated to the study of European law from a transatlantic perspective. Its mission is to provide a forum for the exchange of ideas between scholars, practitioners, and policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic. The journal’s history is deeply intertwined with the development of the European Union and the evolving relationship between the EU and the United States. It has consistently published groundbreaking scholarship on a wide range of topics, from competition law and trade to human rights and constitutional law.
The journal's ranking among the top international and European law journals is a testament to its quality and influence. CJEL is currently the single most cited European law journal in the world. It is widely recognized for its rigorous academic standards and its commitment to publishing innovative and policy-relevant research. The journal’s association with Columbia Law School, one of the world’s leading law schools, further enhances its prestige. Columbia Law, located on Amsterdam Avenue in Morningside Heights, Manhattan, New York City, is an Ivy League institution consistantly ranked 3rd in the country - its name carries weight. You can find more information about the journal on its official website: https://cjel.law.columbia.edu/ and its Scholastica page: https://columbia-journal-of-european-law.scholasticahq.com/. For more on the journal's history, the Wikipedia page is a useful resource, and updates can be found on their LinkedIn profile.
CJEL Guided by Star Professors Anu Bradford and George Bermann
The intellectual rigor and policy relevance of Kop's study are a reflection of the Journal’s guidance and mentorship of two of Columbia Law School's most distinguished scholars: Anu Bradford and George Bermann.
Professor Bradford, the Henry L. Moses Professor of Law and International Organization, is a world-renowned expert on the "Brussels Effect," a term she coined to describe the European Union's unilateral power to regulate global markets. Her work has profoundly shaped our understanding of the EU's role in the world and its ability to set global standards for technology and other industries. Her insights into the EU’s regulatory power are clearly reflected in Kop’s proposal for a European Quantum Act.
Professor George Bermann is the Walter Gellhorn Professor of Law and the Jean Monnet Professor of European Union Law at Columbia Law School. A leading authority on European law, international arbitration, and comparative law, Professor Bermann has been instrumental in shaping the field of European law studies in the United States. His deep understanding of the intricacies of EU law and governance provides a solid foundation for Kop’s ambitious legislative proposal. The combined expertise of these two scholars has undoubtedly enriched the paper, ensuring its legal and political feasibility.
"Towards a European Quantum Act": A Two-Pillar Framework
Kop's paper argues that the European Union has a unique opportunity to shape the global governance of quantum technologies. He proposes a comprehensive "European Quantum Act" based on a two-pillar framework:
Pillar 1: Agile, NLF-Style Regulation: This pillar focuses on creating a flexible and adaptive regulatory framework, similar to the EU’s New Legislative Framework (NLF) for products. It would establish a risk-based approach to regulating quantum technologies, with stricter rules for high-risk applications and more flexibility for low-risk ones. This approach, Kop argues, would allow for innovation to flourish while ensuring that fundamental rights and safety are protected. A key element of this pillar is the "standards-first" philosophy, which prioritizes the development of technical standards as a primary mechanism for embedding democratic values into the very architecture of quantum technologies.
Pillar 2: Ambitious, Chips Act-Style Industrial Policy: This pillar calls for a proactive and ambitious industrial policy to support the development of a competitive and resilient European quantum ecosystem. Drawing inspiration from the U.S. and EU Chips Acts, Kop proposes a range of measures, including funding for research and development, support for startups and SMEs, and the creation of a European quantum infrastructure. This pillar aims to ensure that Europe can compete with the United States and China in the global quantum race.
A Standards-First Approach to Secure a Democratic Future
A central tenet of Kop's proposal is the "standards-first" approach. He argues that technical standards are not merely technical tools but are "vessels for values." By proactively shaping the standards for quantum technologies, the EU can embed its democratic values, such as privacy, fairness, and accountability, into the core of the technology. This approach would not only ensure that quantum technologies are developed and used in a responsible manner but would also give the EU a competitive advantage in the global market for trustworthy quantum systems.
This concept builds upon a recent study published in the prestigious journal Science, senior-authored by Kop. The study, titled "Quantum technology governance: A standards-first approach," was first-authored by Mateo Aboy of Cambridge University, with co-authorship from Urs Gasser, a leading scholar at the Technical University of Munich and Harvard University, and I. Glenn Cohen, Vice Dean of Harvard Law School and Faculty Director of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics. This foundational work, which can be accessed here at Science, provides the rigorous academic underpinnings for leveraging standards as a primary tool for responsible technology governance.
The paper, initiated by the Stanford Center for Responsible Quantum Technology, suggests the creation of a Quantum Technology Quality Management System (QT-QMS), which would be developed in partnership with international bodies like ISO/IEC and IEEE. This system would provide a certifiable CE mark for quantum systems, signaling their compliance with EU standards and values.
Policy Brief by Mauritz Kop and Tracey Forrest through CIGI
To amplify the impact of his academic work, CIGI Senior Fellow Kop has collaborated with Tracey Forrest, Research Director for Transformative Technologies at the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), to produce a policy brief titled "A Strategic Framework for the European Quantum Act: A Standards-First Approach to Secure a Democratic and Competitive Future." This brief distills the key recommendations from the Columbia Law paper into a concise and accessible format for policymakers. It emphasizes the urgent need for a proactive and strategic approach to quantum governance and highlights the benefits of the two-pillar, standards-first model. You can find the policy brief on the Futurium portal of the European Commission: https://futurium.ec.europa.eu/en/european-ai-alliance/document/strategic-framework-european-quantum-act-standards-first-approach-secure-democratic-and-competitive and here on AIRecht.
Letters to Chairman Mark Warner and President Ursula von der Leyen
To ensure that his message reaches the highest levels of government, Kop has also penned two letters, one to U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Mark Warner and another to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. These letters underscore the geopolitical significance of quantum technology and urge for a transatlantic dialogue on its governance.
The letter to Chairman Warner highlights the national security implications of the quantum race and calls for closer cooperation between the United States and the European Union on quantum standards and regulation. The letter to President von der Leyen emphasizes the EU's opportunity to take a leading role in shaping a global governance framework for quantum technologies based on democratic values. These letters demonstrate a commitment to bridging the gap between academia and policy, ensuring that cutting-edge research informs real-world decision-making.
Mauritz Kop – Towards a European Quantum Act: A Two-Pillar Framework for Regulation and Innovation (Sept 9, 2025), Volume 31, Issue No. 1, Columbia Journal of European Law, Columbia Law School (2025), final edition forthcoming.
The ‘Towards a European Quantum Act’ Paper's Abstract: A Glimpse into the Future of Quantum Governance
The abstract of Kop's paper provides a concise and powerful summary of his argument:
ABSTRACT
Quantum technologies, encompassing computing, sensing, networking, and AI hybrids, promise transformative advancements but also pose significant dual-use risks. Realizing their economic potential while mitigating inherent risks and upholding fundamental values necessitates a robust, anticipatory, and harmonized regulatory framework at the EU level, grounded in the precautionary principle. Looking beyond the familiar, such a framework must be sui generis, as foundational quantum mechanical phenomena including superposition, entanglement, and tunneling defy the intuitive classical assumptions of factual certainty, locality, and causality that underpin existing legal paradigms. The unprecedented capabilities and risks stemming from these non-classical properties demand a tailored legal structure and bespoke regulatory architecture, contributing to the emerging lex specialis for quantum information technologies.
This contribution outlines the rationale for a dedicated European Quantum Act (EU QA), responding to strategic imperatives such as the Quantum Europe Strategy. It draws valuable lessons from legislative strategies in the semiconductor (EU/US Chips Acts) and AI (EU AI Act, UK pro-innovation approach, US AI Action Plan, and China's AI+ Plan) domains, as well as governance models from the nuclear sector (IAEA/NPT). A central aspect of this analysis involves a strategic comparison with U.S. and Chinese technology policy, which can be viewed through the lens of an emerging 'American Digital Silk Road' an effort to build a techno-economic sphere of influence by setting the global rules of the road. Understanding this analogy provides the EU with valuable insights into the importance of adopting a "full-stack" industrial policy.
In response, our analysis concludes that the EU Quantum Act should be a two-pillar instrument, combining New Legislative Framework (NLF)-style regulation with an ambitious Chips Act-style industrial and security policy. This method simultaneously fosters innovation through strategic investment while imposing clear, risk-based tiers and regulatory sandboxes to avoid overregulation. The framework is designed to be modular and adaptive across the technology's lifecycle. For its industrial policy, the Act can draw from the EU and US Chips Acts to model funding, secure supply chains, and accelerate the "lab-to-market" pipeline, potentially enhanced by a DARPA-style agency to incentivize high-risk, high-reward research. A comparative analysis of global innovation systems (US, EU, China) informs the need for the EU QA to strategically support both fundamental research and commercialization, particularly for dual-use technologies, which is presented as a responsible act of deterrence necessary for national security and technological sovereignty, thereby bolstering the EU's long-term economic competitiveness. This strategic investment is a prerequisite for the EU to become an indispensable partner in a transatlantic tech alliance, ensuring democratic values inform the next technological era.
Key recommendations for the Act include establishing a dedicated EU Office of Quantum Technology Assessment (OQTA) for expert oversight; adopting a "standards-first" philosophy to embed fundamental rights directly into the technology's architecture through certifiable quality management systems (QT-QMS) that can lead to a CE mark, a model learned from successful precedent in medical device regulation; designing novel privacy-enhancing techniques (PETs) that protect against identity-theft; creating a 10-year intellectual property right for foundational quantum algorithms and software under mandatory FRAND license terms; ensuring strategic preparedness for quantum cybersecurity to mitigate the 'Q-Day' threat through a new legal duty of 'Anticipatory Data Stewardship'; utilizing a data-driven methodology for supply chain security, for instance through a Quantum Criticality Index (QCI); and implementing harmonized, use-case specific export controls.
Our contribution articulates the concept of a 'quantum event horizon' to underscore the deep uncertainty and risk of technological lock-in, arguing for a proactive strategy that combines heavy investment in responsible innovation with adaptive governance. To address the risk of technology outpacing classical guardrails, the article explores forward-looking governance paradigms, including novel 'algorithmic regulation' mechanisms and the imposition of a legally enforceable fiduciary duty upon advanced Al systems to act as 'quantum-agentic stewards'. The paper further argues that these transformative technologies may necessitate -at a future stage- new legal doctrines such as the 'Quantum Lex Machina', and new philosophical foundations, which it then proceeds to examine.
On the international stage, the EU should proactively engage in discussions towards a global non-proliferation framework for quantum and Al weapons of mass destruction, inspired by the IAEA/NPT model and overseen by an 'International Quantum Agency (IQA)'. This vision culminates in the 'Qubits for Peace' initiative, a global governance structure designed to ensure quantum technologies are developed safely, ethically, and for the benefit of all humanity. The article concludes by consolidating the analysis into a detailed legislative blueprint for a prospective EU Quantum Act.