On 7 May 2026, the Council of the EU announced that a provisional political agreement had been reached with the European Parliament on the “Artificial Intelligence Omnibus” to streamline parts of the EU Artificial Intelligence Act ahead of key compliance deadlines. The agreement is a targeted recalibration rather than a wholesale rewrite. The Act’s risk-based framework remains in place, but the package gives companies more time to prepare and reduces some duplication, especially for product-related systems and smaller businesses. The text still requires formal adoption by the Parliament and Council and publication in the Official Journal before it becomes law. This is expected before 2 August 2026.
The most consequential change is the revised timetable for high-risk systems. 2 December 2027: implementation of provisions relating to standalone high-risk Artificial Intelligence systems listed in Annex III of the Act. 2 August 2028: implementation of provisions relating to high-risk Artificial Intelligence systems embedded in products covered by EU product-safety regimes listed in Annex I. The Act’s requirements on synthetic-content marking and labelling have also been extended in a limited way. Providers of generative Artificial Intelligence systems who placed their systems on the market before 2 August 2026 have until 2 December 2026 to comply with those watermarking obligations, while systems placed on the market on or after 2 August 2026 must still comply from that date. Other transparency obligations continue to apply from 2 August 2026.
The agreement also adds an explicit prohibition on systems used to generate non-consensual sexual or intimate images of real identifiable persons and systems used to generate child sexual abuse material. This prohibition will apply from 2 December 2026. It covers both tools designed for that purpose and systems where such outputs are a reasonably foreseeable and reproducible outcome without adequate technical safeguards. Violations of the Act’s prohibited-practice provisions can attract fines of up to €35 million or 7% of total worldwide annual turnover, whichever is higher. The package also broadens the ability to process special-category personal data for bias detection and correction across all Artificial Intelligence systems, subject to strict necessity, security, and record-keeping conditions.
For industrial and product Artificial Intelligence, the compromise shifts machinery-related systems toward sectoral rules rather than the full high-risk regime, while allowing the Commission to disapply certain Artificial Intelligence Act requirements where other EU legislation already offers equivalent or higher protection. The AI Office gains stronger powers, including inspections, investigations, binding commitments, non-compliance decisions, and fines. It will also have exclusive competence over systems where the same provider, or providers within the same undertaking, develops both a general-purpose model and a downstream system built on it. The deadline for Member States to establish national regulatory sandboxes is pushed back to 2 August 2027, and an EU-level sandbox will give priority access to SMEs and small mid-cap enterprises.
The omnibus package also softens the Act’s literacy obligation. Article 4 is rewritten so organisations must “take measures to support the development of” Artificial Intelligence literacy rather than ensure any particular level of competence. At the same time, the text signals that regulators will still expect structured training and documented measures. Businesses are encouraged to use the extra time to build inventories, classification logic, supplier diligence, and evidence packs, while addressing transparency duties and content-safety controls now. Until the agreement is formally adopted and published in the Official Journal, the original implementation date of 2 August 2026 remains in place.
