From 2 August the EU AI Act stops being a deadline and becomes an enforcer

The EU AI Act has been arriving in stages since it entered into force in August 2024. On 2 August 2026 it reaches the stage that changes the calculus for companies: enforcement.

From that date, full investigatory and enforcement powers sit with national market surveillance authorities in each member state. Those authorities can investigate suspected violations, demand documentation, order products withdrawn from the market, and impose fines — and not only for the general-purpose AI provisions, but across the obligations that have been phasing in since February 2025. The GPAI penalty powers and the Article 50 transparency duties take effect on the same date.

The penalty structure has three tiers: up to EUR 35 million or 7% of global annual turnover for the prohibited practices, up to EUR 15 million or 3% for high-risk and transparency breaches, and up to EUR 7.5 million or 1% for supplying misleading information to authorities. Enforcement is shared between the 27 national authorities, the European AI Office for general-purpose models, and notified bodies handling conformity assessment.

The open question is not the law but the capacity to apply it. Assessments of member-state readiness in mid-2026 put only 10 of 27 at an advanced stage of implementation, which points to uneven enforcement rather than a uniform switch being thrown — the pattern the GDPR showed in its first years, where the text applied everywhere and the practice did not.