Switzerland decides: no Swiss AI Act. What the Federal Council chose today
The Federal Council settled its regulatory direction on 12 February 2025 — ratify the Council of Europe convention, adjust existing law sector by sector. For SMEs this is good news with one caveat.
Today, 12 February 2025, the Federal Council decided how Switzerland will regulate artificial intelligence. The choice: ratify the Council of Europe’s Framework Convention on AI, and implement it through targeted, sector-specific adjustments to existing law rather than a broad horizontal statute on the EU model.
Cross-cutting rules are to be limited to areas central to fundamental rights, data protection being the obvious one.
What this means in plain terms
There will be no Swiss AI Act. No single law defining risk classes, conformity assessments and registration duties for AI systems. That is a genuine divergence from the EU approach.
The rules that govern you stay where they are. Data protection law, product liability, professional duties, sector supervision. If you are in a regulated industry, your regulator will address AI within its existing framework rather than a new one appearing above it.
The timeline is long. Ratification and the resulting legislative work run over years, with a consultation draft expected well after this year. Nothing changes for your company this month.
Why this is good news for an SME
Because the EU model imposes classification and documentation duties that are proportionate for a medical device manufacturer and heavy for a thirty-person engineering office. A sectoral approach means the obligations that reach you are the ones your industry already understands.
It also means less new vocabulary. You will not have to learn what a « high-risk system » is in order to keep using a chatbot.
The caveat worth writing down
Switzerland choosing a lighter path does not exempt Swiss companies from the EU AI Act where they touch the EU market. If you sell into the EU, or your system’s output is used there, the European rules apply regardless of what Bern decides.
So the practical position for an exporting SME is unchanged: Swiss law governs you at home, EU law governs your EU-facing activity, and the same one page covers both.
That page has not become less useful today. It has become the thing that lets you answer a German customer’s questionnaire without a project.