On Thursday 7 May 2026 the European Parliament and Council of the EU reached political agreement on the Digital Omnibus on AI, which will amend the EU AI Act.
The European Commission published the Digital Omnibus on AI proposal on 19 November 2025, with the aim of “simplifying the AI Act while maintaining its level of protection”.
What is going to change?
Timeline for high-risk AI
The timeline for when obligations under the EU AI Act for high-risk systems apply has been extended.
Obligations under the EU AI Act for high-risk AI systems under Annex III (such as biometrics, critical infrastructure, and employment) were due to come into force on 2 August 2026, and for high-risk AI systems under Annex I (AI systems that are safety components of certain regulated products such as lifts or toys) were due to come into force on 2 August 2027.
Political agreement has now been reached to extend those deadlines as follows:
- for high-risk AI systems under Annex III, the obligations come into force on 2 December 2027; and
- for high-risk AI systems under Annex I, the obligations come into force on 2 August 2028.
Notably, this will give the Commission enough time to adopt much-anticipated guidance on high-risk AI systems. Moreover, the European Standardisation Organisations will have time to adopt technical standards for how to implement the AI Act’s requirements for high-risk AI systems. Once these standards are endorsed by the Commission, providers of AI systems will benefit from a presumption of compliance to the extent that they comply with these standards.
Prohibition on non-consensual explicit content
The Digital Omnibus on AI will prohibit AI systems that generate non-consensual sexually explicit and intimate content or child sexual abuse material, such as AI ‘nudification’ apps.
Simplification and clarification
The Digital Omnibus on AI will also make certain amendments to the EU AI Act to simplify and clarify compliance, such as:
- extension of privileges for small and medium sized enterprises to also cover small mid-cap companies;
- clarification of the interplay between the EU AI Act and EU product safety laws, such as the Machinery Regulation, to avoid duplication between sectoral and AI requirements;
- increasing access to regulatory sandboxes, including an EU-level sandbox, to test AI solutions in real world conditions; and
- strengthening of the enforcement powers of the Commission’s AI Office to support oversight of certain AI systems, including systems built on general-purpose models and those embedded in very large online platforms and very large search engines.
What happens next?
Although a political agreement on the Digital Omnibus on AI proposal has now been reached by the European Parliament and Council of the EU, the next steps are:
- for the Parliament and Council to formally adopt the political agreement which is likely to happen in June; and
- once adopted and translated into all official languages of the EU, the amendments will be published in the Official Journal of the European Union and enter into force three days later – this is likely to happen at the end of July and therefore just in time before the original 2 August deadline.
There is also a separate Digital Omnibus package, published by the European Commission on 19 November 2025, which would amend the EU GDPR and E-Privacy Directive. However, political agreement has not yet been reached on those proposals.
Takeaways
The political agreement on the Digital Omnibus on AI mirrors the legislative trend of streamlining proposals for AI regulation and extending compliance deadlines to allow stakeholder consensus to crystallize. In these respects, the agreement mirrors recent developments concerning Colorado’s AI Act, the enforcement of which has been paused while lawmakers weigh proposals to amend the statute to ease some of its compliance burdens on developers and deployers. These demonstrate that, even as lawmakers seek to balance individual rights with innovation, the regulatory environment for AI is quickly evolving. Business should therefore continue to closely monitor the Digital Omnibus proposals as they advance through the legislative and adoption processes.
