AI Act delay is not enough: the omnibus must fix Europe’s industrial competitiveness

DIGITALEUROPE today urges the European Parliament and Council not to sacrifice structural reform in the rush to adopt the AI omnibus, warning that Europe risks locking unresolved flaws into its most important digital law for years. The broader digital omnibus must also deliver meaningful simplification of the Data Act and cybersecurity rules. 

On the AI omnibus, Parliament and Council should ask the Commission to separate the necessary delay from the substantive reform. Secure the postponement swiftly, but create the political space for an honest review of the structural issues that must be fixed. European machinery manufacturers, medical technology firms and industrial software developers are already struggling with high-risk classifications and overlapping conformity requirements. 

A delay to the AI Act’s high-risk obligations is urgent. Standards will not be ready. Enforcement structures are incomplete. Businesses cannot comply without the missing pieces. But using urgency to force through an only lightly amended text would be a historic mistake. 

• ‘Europe needs a serious political conversation about whether the AI Act, as currently designed, will strengthen or constrain our economy,’ said Cecilia Bonefeld-Dahl, Director General of DIGITALEUROPE. ‘That conversation can’t happen if lawmakers are told they must hurry the AI omnibus through. Rushing may secure a delay – but it will freeze unresolved problems for years, precisely at a decisive moment for Europe’s digital and industrial competitiveness.’ 

Negotiations in Council and Parliament have already been accelerated under the assumption that significant amendments would endanger the postponement. DIGITALEUROPE rejects this false dilemma. 

Structural corrections – including aligning AI rules with Europe’s industrial legislation, as the Commission itself has now recognised in the medical devices context1 – require time, scrutiny and political debate. They cannot be negotiated under the threat that any change would lose the delay. 

If co-legislators adopt the AI omnibus simply to secure a delay, they will postpone meaningful reform to a vague future fitness check. That would send a damaging signal to Europe’s manufacturers, health technology providers, energy companies and engineering firms at a time when crucial investment decisions are being made now. 

The stakes go beyond AI. In the broader digital omnibus, political attention is currently focused almost exclusively on the GDPR and ePrivacy amendments. Meanwhile, the most consequential compliance burdens for European industry – under the Data Act and the Cyber Resilience Act – remain untouched. 

Co-legislators must look beyond the polarised debate on GDPR and ePrivacy and address heavy compliance burdens in the Data Act and the Cyber Resilience Act. Mandatory, horizontal data-sharing obligations, fragmented incident reporting timelines and unrealistic standardisation deadlines are the issues that will most affect Europe’s industrial competitiveness. 

• ‘Europe cannot claim to simplify whilst leaving the heaviest compliance machinery intact,’ Bonefeld-Dahl added. ‘Our industries need workable adjustments now – not years from now, after another review cycle.’ 

DIGITALEUROPE has set out extensive and concrete recommendations on both proposals in two papers published today, available here and here.