Brussels proposes to delay its own AI deadlines
The Commission published a package yesterday that would push the high-risk obligations well past August 2026. A prediction made here in August has been overtaken by events.
On 19 November 2025 the European Commission published a legislative package, widely referred to as the digital omnibus, which proposes amending the AI Act. The central element is a deferral of the high-risk obligations from their original date of 2 August 2026 to substantially later.
This blog said in August that the next EU date to watch was 2 August 2026. That is now the thing being changed, and it is worth being direct about what this does and does not mean.
Why the delay is being proposed
Not politics, mostly logistics. The standards that companies would need in order to comply have not been finished, and several member states have not designated the authorities that would supervise compliance.
A deadline that requires tools nobody has built yet is not a deadline, and the Commission has chosen to acknowledge that rather than let it arrive.
What it means for a Swiss SME
Concretely, nothing changes today, for two reasons. First, this is a proposal: it must go through the Parliament and the Council, and the final text will differ from the published one. Second, the high-risk category was never likely to cover an ordinary Swiss SME, as this blog has said repeatedly since October 2024.
So: a deadline that did not apply to you may move. That is the whole of it.
The part worth actually taking from this
A general lesson about regulatory timelines in this field: they slip. The pattern over the past two years has been consistent — announced dates arrive later and in weaker form than the coverage suggests.
That is an argument for the posture this blog has recommended throughout: do the cheap, durable things — know what you use, know what goes into it, write down who decided — and do not buy compliance products against dates that have not settled.
And the honest correction
Our August post treated 2 August 2026 as fixed. It was not, and readers who marked it in a calendar should now mark it as uncertain. The underlying advice does not change, but the date does, and saying so is better than quietly updating it.