Lawmakers vote to delay the toughest AI rules by a year, and to keep the deadline for the rest

Lawmakers voted to postpone by a year the obligations that would have applied to so-called high-risk artificial intelligence systems, while leaving the rest of the framework on its original timetable.

The reason given was not political. The obligations require conformity assessment against harmonized technical standards, and those standards do not exist yet. Standards bodies missed two internal deadlines and told legislators that the specifications for risk management and data governance would not be ready in time for firms to be assessed against them.

What was not delayed

Transparency requirements keep their original date. From next spring, systems that interact with people must disclose that they are machines, and synthetic audio, image and video content must carry machine-readable provenance markers.

Those obligations do not depend on missing standards, which is why they survived the vote intact. Enforcement of the labeling rule is delegated to national regulators, several of which have said publicly that they lack the staff to do it.

You cannot certify against a standard that has not been written. The choice was to delay the deadline or to pretend the assessment means something.— A member of the committee that drafted the amendment

Reaction

Industry groups welcomed the delay and said two years remains tight for firms with systems already in the market. Civil society organizations opposed it, arguing that the high-risk category covers exactly the applications — hiring, credit, benefits eligibility — where harm is already documented.

• Delayed: high-risk system obligations, from spring 2027 to 2028
• On schedule: disclosure of machine interaction; provenance marking of synthetic media
• Reason: harmonized technical standards not ready for conformity assessment
• Enforcement: delegated to national regulators, several reporting staffing gaps

A review clause added during the debate requires the standards bodies to report progress every six months, and permits a further delay only by a fresh vote — a provision its author described as “the difference between a deadline and a suggestion.”