The US votes tomorrow. What actually changes for European AI rules
Less than most commentary suggests, and more than nothing. A short guide to which parts of your AI setup depend on Washington and which do not.
The United States votes tomorrow, 5 November 2024. Much of the AI commentary this week treats the outcome as decisive for everyone. For a Swiss SME it is worth separating what genuinely depends on the result from what does not.
What does not change either way
The EU AI Act. It entered into force on 1 August 2024 and its timetable runs on European law. The 2 February 2025 prohibitions and the AI literacy obligation arrive regardless of who wins.
The revised Swiss Data Protection Act, in force since September 2023, equally.
And the plain commercial facts: the models your tools use, what they cost, and who your vendor’s subprocessor is.
What does depend on the result
Federal US AI policy direction. The current administration’s approach rests on an executive order, which is an instrument the next president can rewrite or withdraw without Congress. That is a real difference between a continuation and a change.
The stability of transatlantic data transfers. The EU-US Data Privacy Framework, on which many European companies rely to use US services lawfully, depends on US oversight bodies and commitments staying in place. It has been challenged before and survived. Its durability is a political question, not only a legal one.
Export controls and chip policy, which shape what models exist and what they cost, though slowly.
The proportionate response
Do nothing dramatic on Wednesday. Elections move slowly into law, and reacting to a headline is how companies end up with a migration they did not need.
Do one thing instead: know, for each AI-touching tool you use, where the data is processed and under which legal mechanism. If the answer for a given tool is « somewhere in the United States, under the Data Privacy Framework », that is fine today and worth a note in your review calendar for next spring.
Dependencies you have written down are manageable. Dependencies you discover during a crisis are not.