EU AI Act: What Applies Now and What Was Delayed

The EU AI Act has been reported as both imminent and postponed, often in the same week. Both are partly true, which is why so many businesses have misread their position. This page sets out what is actually in force, what moved, and what did not.

The starting point

The AI Act is Regulation (EU) 2024/1689. It entered into force on 1 August 2024 and applies in phases rather than all at once. It is a product-safety style regulation: obligations scale with the risk of what the system does, not with the technology behind it.

What is already in force

  • 2 February 2025. The prohibitions in Article 5 took effect, alongside the Article 4 AI literacy obligation. Both have now been live for over a year.
  • 2 August 2025. Obligations for providers of general-purpose AI models applied, and the EU-level governance structures were required to be in place.
  • 2 August 2026. The Act became generally applicable. The Article 50 transparency duties took effect, and the AI Office and national market surveillance authorities began supervising and enforcing.

That last date is the one most often missed. Enforcement did not slip. What slipped was a specific, narrow category of obligation.

What was delayed, and why

The Digital Omnibus on AI, Regulation (EU) 2026/1744, was published in the Official Journal on 24 July 2026 and entered into force on 27 July 2026. It is the first amendment to the AI Act since adoption. It defers the substantive high-risk obligations:

  • Standalone high-risk systems listed in Annex III – covering areas such as recruitment, credit scoring, education and critical infrastructure – move from 2 August 2026 to 2 December 2027.
  • High-risk AI embedded in products that are already regulated under other EU law, listed in Annex I, moves from 2 August 2027 to 2 August 2028.

The reason was practical rather than political. The harmonised technical standards that would let a provider demonstrate conformity were not delivered on time, so businesses would have faced binding requirements without an agreed way to satisfy them. The requirements themselves were not weakened. Only the date on which they bite moved, and both new dates are fixed rather than conditional on further decisions.

What did not move

This is the part worth reading twice, because the press coverage of the delay was much louder than the coverage of what stayed put.

  • The Article 5 prohibitions, in force since February 2025.
  • The Article 4 AI literacy obligation, which was amended but not deferred. See our guide to the Article 4 AI literacy obligation.
  • The Article 50 transparency duties, which applied from 2 August 2026. Systems that generate synthetic content and were already on the EU market before that date have until 2 December 2026 for the machine-readable marking requirement, but nothing else in Article 50 was postponed.
  • The obligations for general-purpose AI models.
  • The penalty ceilings: up to €35 million or 7% of worldwide annual turnover for prohibited practices, and up to €15 million or 3% for most other breaches.

The Omnibus also added two further prohibited practices to Article 5, applying from 2 December 2026, and pushed the deadline for national regulatory sandboxes out to 2 August 2027.

Does this apply to businesses outside the EU?

Often, yes. Article 2 sets the territorial scope, and it was not changed. The Act can reach a provider or deployer established outside the EU where the output produced by the AI system is used within the EU. For an Irish or UK business with European customers, suppliers or staff, assuming the Act stops at the border is a risky default.

What to do about it

Three practical steps. Work out which systems you use and in what role – our guide on provider and deployer roles covers this, and the Deployer and Governance Course deals with it in depth. Deal with Article 4, which is live now rather than in 2027. Then use the extra time on high-risk obligations to build a better file rather than to stop work.

For structured training, the EU AI Act Article 4 Training Course covers the literacy obligation in detail, and there is a plain-English reference at the EU AI Act Article 4 guide. The same courses are listed for Irish learners at BH Courses Ireland.