The Deadline Moved: What the EU AI Act Deferral Reveals About Boards

On 2 August 2026, the EU AI Act&rsquo;s rules for standalone high-risk systems were supposed to take effect. They will not. Six days before the deadline, the EU brought an amendment into force deferring those obligations to December 2027, because the standards and implementation machinery needed to make them workable were not ready. In this article, I set out what the deferral reveals about Boards…