EU AI Act trilogue reconvenes today with the August deadline on the line

verified

Wednesday, May 13, 2026

The News

The follow-up political trilogue on the EU AI Act Digital Omnibus is scheduled for approximately 13 May 2026, two weeks after the failed 28 April session . The 28 April trilogue collapsed after roughly 12 hours of negotiation when Council and Parliament failed to converge on the conformity-assessment architecture for AI in regulated products under Annex I — covering AI as a safety component in machinery, medical devices, in-vitro diagnostics, toys, and other products already governed by sectoral safety law — with the institutions split on whether Section A products should move to Section B . After the failed 28 April session, the 2 August 2026 deadline still stands legally. Background: the Council and Parliament reached a separate provisional agreement on 7 May that would postpone the deadline for national AI regulatory sandboxes until 2 August 2027 and reduce the watermarking transparency grace period to 3 months, with a new deadline of 2 December 2026 (Modulos analysis, European Council).

The Read

The legally-correct read is: if today's trilogue doesn't close, the 2 August deadline survives and any high-risk AI system not certified by then is technically out of compliance, with fines of up to €15 million or 3% of global annual turnover for non-compliance with high-risk provisions . The practically-correct read is that Brussels has never let a hard deadline stand against the kind of industrial unreadiness in front of it now — forbearance, transitional guidance, and informal "we won't enforce yet" letters are the most likely outcome, and the legal team that's planning around that quietly is the legal team that's right. What changes today is which file (full deal, partial Annex I deferral, or collapse to August) the next 90 days run on. None of the three is "August stays clean."

Do This Week

Pull every AI system on your product roadmap that could fall under Annex I (medical devices, machinery, in-vitro diagnostics, toys, vehicles, aviation safety components). Put each into one of three buckets: (1) we're certified or on a credible path to be by 2 August, (2) we're betting on forbearance or a deal today, (3) we don't actually know which Annex it falls under. Bucket 3 is the urgent one — escalate to outside counsel this week, not next quarter.

For Legal ops / GC at any company with AI in a regulated product