EU could water down AI Act amid Trump and big tech pressure | European Commission

The European Commission is considering plans to delay parts of the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act, after intense pressure from businesses and Donald Trump’s administration.

The commission confirmed that “a reflection” was “still ongoing” on delaying aspects of the regulation, after media reports that Brussels was weighing up changes with the aim of easing demands on big tech companies.

The act, the first comprehensive legislation in the world regulating AI, came into force in August 2024, but many of its provisions are yet to apply. Most obligations on companies developing high-risk AI systems that “pose serious risks to health, safety or fundamental rights” are not due to come into effect until August 2026 or a year after that.

According to the Financial Times, the commission is considering giving a one-year “grace period” to companies breaching the rules on the highest-risk AI.

Providers of generative AI – systems that can produce content, such as text or images – who have already placed products on the market before the implementation date could be granted a one-year pause from the laws “to provide sufficient time   … to adapt their practices within a reasonable time without disrupting the market”, stated an internal document cited by the FT.

The commission is also considering delays to imposing fines for violations of its new AI transparency rules until August 2027 to “provide sufficient time for adaptation of providers and deployers of AI systems” to implement the obligations, the newspaper reported.

Also being studied is greater flexibility for AI developers of high-risk systems over monitoring performance of products on the market, by allowing them to follow guidance that would be less prescriptive than the system originally envisaged, according to the specialist news site MLex, which first reported on the planned amendments to the act.

The proposals could change before their expected release on 19 November. Once published, they would then have to be agreed by EU member states and the European parliament.

The EU has come under repeated pressure from the Trump administration to weaken regulation of tech companies. The US president recently threatened to impose tariffs on countries with tech regulations or digital taxes that he deemed to be “designed to harm or discriminate against American technology”.

Meta announced this year that it would not be signing the commission’s code of practice for general-purpose AI models. “Europe is heading down the wrong path on AI,” wrote the company’s chief global affairs officer, Joel Kaplan, who contended that the code introduced “legal uncertainties” for model developers, as well as measures that went “far beyond the scope of the AI Act”.

But it is not just US companies that have complained about Europe’s regulation of the fast-evolving technology.

Dozens of European companies have urged a two-year pause on the act to allow time for “reasonable implementation” and “further simplification of the new rules”. An open letter signed by the heads of 46 companies, including Airbus, Lufthansa and Mercedes-Benz, said such a delay would show innovators and investors that Europe was “serious about its simplification and competitiveness agenda”.

The European Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier said: “When it comes to potentially delaying the implementation of targeted parts of the AI Act, a reflection is still ongoing.” No decision had been taken, he said, adding that the commission would “always remain fully behind the AI Act and its objectives”.

Regnier said Brussels had “constant contacts with our partners around the globe” but it was not for a third country to decide how the EU legislated. “This is our sovereign right,” he added.