EU Urged to Delay AI Act Enforcement Amid Industry Concerns

The EU weighs current delay of the AI Act, balancing clarity, risks, and international regulatory influence.

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With less than one month to go before the first tranche of obligations under the EU's Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act) applies to general-purpose AI (GPAI) models—a milestone scheduled for 2 August 2025—the European Commission finds itself at the center of a heated debate, receiving mounting pressure from some of the world's largest technology companies and European industry leaders to pause or delay its phased implementation, a request that now sits in tension with the bloc's broader ambition to assert global leadership in regulating artificial intelligence through robust risk-based frameworks.

The AI Act, which formally entered into force on 1 August 2024, was deliberately structured to roll out in successive waves over a three-year period to give companies and member states time to adapt. The earliest provisions—prohibitions on unacceptable AI use—took effect in February 2025, while the next wave of obligations targeting GPAI models, such as foundational models developed by Google, OpenAI, Mistral, and others, is scheduled for 2 August 2025, requiring compliance in critical areas such as transparency, technical documentation, copyright adherence, bias and toxicity testing, robustness evaluations, and energy usage reporting. The subsequent wave, targeting high-risk and systemically impactful models, will arrive in August 2026, followed by further measures in August 2027, thereby establishing a clear but ambitious timeline designed to balance regulatory rigor with pragmatic deployment.