But companies are awaiting technical standards that they have not yet received. Industry lobby groups and EU countries have stated that these standards should be ready well ahead of the August deadline so they can comply.
In July, some of Europe’s top CEOs called for a two-year pause “to address the uncertainty.”
The Commission’s thinking on a potential pause has shifted over the last six months. If standards are not ready in time, “we should not rule out postponing some parts of the AI Act,” the EU’s tech chief Henna Virkkunen told the EU’s digital ministers in June.
Later, she set a deadline of late August to decide if these standards were ready.
With no final assessment of the standards in sight, last week saw a fresh acceleration. Draghi declared publicly on Tuesday that the high-risk AI rules should be paused “until we better understand the drawbacks.”
The same day, the Commission opened a consultation on an effort to simplify the EU’s tech rulebooks, in which it said that “targeted adjustments” to the EU’s AI Act are on the table as part of that package. Pausing parts of the act would require an adjustment to the law.