On 13 March 2026, the Council of the European Union agreed its position on the Digital Omnibus on AI. The Council’s draft notably deals with some of the issues raised by the EDPB and EDPS in their recent opinion. Some highlights where the Council has taken a different position to the Commission’s draft include:
- Reintroducing the requirement for providers to register AI systems in the EU database for high-risk systems, where they consider their systems to be exempted from classification as high-risk.
- Introducing a standard of strict necessity (rather than necessity) for processing special category data to detect bias.
- Introducing a fixed timeline for the delayed application of high-risk rules: the new application dates would be 2 December 2027 for stand-alone high-risk AI systems and 2 August 2028 for high-risk AI systems embedded in products rather than the flexible start date determined by the existence of guidance which is proposed by the Commission.
- A postponement of the establishment of national regulatory sandboxes until 2 December 2027 (rather than 2 August 2026 as per the EU AI Act).
- A new prohibition on the generation of non-consensual sexual and intimate content or child sexual abuse material.You can find the press release and Council draft here.
