The signal
The EU's Digital Omnibus package, which would defer the AI Act's high-risk obligations, is provisionally agreed but not yet adopted. Until the amending regulation is published in the Official Journal, the binding legal text still reads August 2, 2026. That is now weeks away. A provisional political agreement fixes negotiated content between the institutions; it produces no legal effect.
The insight
Institutions planning to the expected deferral rather than the enacted date are making a bet, and most are making it without a record. If the deferral is adopted on schedule, nothing is lost. If it slips, narrows, or fails, the institution arrives at a binding deadline having documented only that it planned against a press release. The Informed Decision Standard asks whether the organization can demonstrate, in evidence, that it made an informed decision about AI risk. Reading the trade press is not evidence. A dated memo from counsel stating the bet, the basis, and the fallback is.
The action item
Before the next board meeting, ask management for a written answer to one question: which of our AI systems touch the EU market, and which would qualify as high-risk under the AI Act as enacted? A board cannot take a defensible position on a deadline it has not mapped to an inventory. If the answer takes more than two weeks to produce, that is a second finding, and it belongs in the minutes too.