The European Tech Alliance (EUTA) today published its position paper on the European Commission’s AI Omnibus, calling for targeted and practical adjustments to ensure the AI Act remains risk-based, operationally workable and genuinely innovation-enabling.
Representing leading European-born tech companies, EUTA welcomes the Commission’s effort to clarify and streamline the implementation of the AI Act (Regulation (EU) 2024/1689), but warns that simplification must address real implementation challenges, not merely adjust timelines.
1. Preserve the AI Act’s risk-based architecture
EUTA stresses that the risk-based structure is a core strength of the AI Act and must be protected in the AI Omnibus. In particular:
- Article 6(3) should function as a genuine safeguard, ensuring AI systems listed in Annex III are classified as high-risk only where they materially influence decisions or pose significant risks.
- The profiling clause should be narrowly defined to avoid systematic over-classification, especially in employment and recruitment, where routine processing risks being captured despite limited harm.
2. Make high-risk obligations operational in practice
To avoid box-ticking compliance and legal uncertainty, EUTA calls for:
- Commission-led methodologies, templates and practical guidance to help companies conduct fundamental rights risk assessments and mitigation.
- Alignment with existing and forthcoming guidance from Member States and the European Data Protection Board to prevent duplication and conflicting expectations.
Clear tools are essential to ensure resources are focused on meaningful risk management, not procedural formalism.
3. Ensure transparency obligations are proportionate and technically feasible
EUTA supports postponing the AI Act’s transparency obligations under Article 50, but urges lawmakers to:
- Extend the grace period from six to twelve months, covering all of Article 50 and applying equally to AI systems already on the market and new systems.
- Align timelines with the forthcoming Code of Practice and relevant standards.
- Apply transparency requirements only where there is a real risk of deception, avoiding intrusive disclosures where AI use is already obvious to users.
4. Provide legal certainty on entry into force
Businesses need predictable compliance timelines. EUTA therefore calls for:
- Clear triggers linking the application of postponed high-risk obligations to the availability of standards, guidance and compliance tools.
- An end to open-ended timelines that undermine investment planning and legal certainty.
The following can be attributed to EUTA’s Secretary General, Victoria de Posson
“The AI Omnibus is an opportunity to fix real implementation bottlenecks, but postponement alone is not enough.” “European innovators need clear guidance, proportionate obligations and predictable timelines to invest and scale responsibly.”
Next Steps
EUTA stands ready to continue a constructive, solutions-oriented dialogue with EU institutions to ensure the final AI Omnibus strengthens trust in AI while supporting Europe’s competitiveness, innovation capacity and leadership in artificial intelligence.
👉🏻 Find out more and read EUTA’s position paper on the Commission’s AI omnibus proposal
About the European Tech Alliance
EUTA represents leading European tech companies that provide innovative products and services to more than one billion users. Our 36 EUTA member companies from 16 European countries are popular and have earned the trust of consumers. As companies born and bred in Europe, for whom the EU is a crucial market, we have a deep commitment to European citizens and values.
With the right conditions, our companies can strengthen Europe’s resilience and technological autonomy, protect and empower users online, and promote Europe’s values of transparency, rule of law and innovation to the rest of the world.
The EUTA calls for boosting Europe’s tech competitiveness by having an ambitious EU tech strategy to overcome growth obstacles, making a political commitment to clear, targeted and risk-based rules, and enforcing rules consistently to match the globalised market we are in.
For media inquiries, please contact:Victoria de Posson, EUTA Secretary General
E-mail: victoria@eutechalliance.eu
E-mail: info@eutechalliance.eu
Phone: +32 476 25 08 16
www.eutechalliance.eu
