EU delays AI Act
Key elements of the EU’s AI Act have been delayed, letting some high‑risk systems avoid immediate oversight — at the same time EU institutions have banned fully AI‑generated images and video from official communications. ( ). Rights groups warn that parallel ‘simplification’ moves could erode privacy protections, while industry leaders press for cheap, reliable energy to power Europe’s AI ambitions. ( )
The European Parliament’s IMCO and LIBE committees adopted a position on 18 March 2026 proposing to push Annex III (stand‑alone high‑risk) obligations to 2 December 2027 and Annex I (AI embedded in regulated products) to 2 August 2028. (dpo-consulting.com) The Council’s mandate formalised fixed delayed application dates — 2 December 2027 for stand‑alone high‑risk systems and 2 August 2028 for high‑risk systems embedded in products — while reinstating an obligation for providers to register systems they consider exempted from high‑risk classification. (consilium.europa.eu) The Commission missed a legal deadline of 2 February 2026 to publish guidance on how to classify and comply with high‑risk AI under Article 6, a delay the IAPP reported as a key reason given for timeline changes. (iapp.org) Parliament and the Commission also clashed on transparency timing: Parliament’s committee text would bring the Article 50 watermarking deadline forward to 2 November 2026, while the Commission’s omnibus proposal offered a grace period for machine‑readable marking until 2 February 2027. (dpo-consulting.com) (twobirds.com) The EU’s main institutions — the European Commission, European Parliament and Council — have issued internal rules banning the use of fully AI‑generated images and video in official communications, a policy Politico reported on 31 March 2026 and which noted some national governments continue to deploy synthetic media in political messaging. (politico.eu) Civil‑society groups including Amnesty have warned that the Commission’s “Digital Omnibus” simplification package, first tabled on 19 November 2025, would narrow definitions in GDPR and weaken safeguards for data and discrimination protection. (amnesty.org) (techpolicy.press) Think‑tanks and industry stakeholders are simultaneously flagging an energy bottleneck for AI: an ECFR policy brief calls for an urgent “fast energy” programme to speed access to power for compute, while data‑centre projects such as Nebius’s planned large AI facility in Finland underline rising demand to connect data centres to European grids. (ecfr.eu) (cnbc.com)
