Historic Timeline

We provide some of the key milestones in the history of the AI Act on this page.

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Coming up: The implementation timeline

To see all upcoming milestones for the implementation of the Act, see our Implementation Timeline.

2024

  • 12 July 2024 – The AI Act is published in the Official Journal of the European Union.
  • 21 May 2024 – The European Council formally adopted the EU AI Act.
  • 21 February 2024 – The European Artificial Intelligence Office was launched within the Commission, falling under the Directorate-General for Communication Networks, Content and Technology to support the implementing of the AI Act, especially for general-purpose AI.
  • 13 February 2024 – the Internal Market and Civil Liberties Committees voted 71-8 (7 abstentions) to approve the result of negotiations with the member states on the AI Act.
    * The EU’s 27 member states have unanimously endorsed the AI Act, affirming the political agreement reached in December.

2023

  • 9 December 2023 – The Parliament and the Council reached a provisional agreement on the AI Act.
  • 14 June 2023 – The European Parliament adopted its negotiating position on the AI Act, with 499 votes in favour, 28 against, and 93 abstentions.

2022

  • 6 December 2022 – The Council of the EU adopted its common position (‘general approach’) on the AI Act.
  • 28 September 2022 – The European Commission proposed a targeted harmonisation of national liability rules for AI, aiming to complement the AI Act by facilitating civil liability claims for damages.
  • 5 September 2022 – The Committee on Legal Affairs (JURI) at the European Parliament adopted their opinion on the AI Act as the last committee in the Parliament.
  • 17 June 2022 – The Czech Presidency of the Council of the EU shared a discussion paper with other EU governments, listing the main priorities of the AI Act for them.
  • 15 June 2022 – The French Presidency of the Council of the EU circulated their final compromise text before Czech took over the presidency.
  • 1 June 2022 – Deadline for each political group of the European Parliament to submit amendments to the AI Act. Thousands of amendments were submitted in total and briefly summarised here.
  • 13 May 2022 – The French Presidency of the Council published the text on Article 4a proposing to regulate general purpose AI systems, which are AI systems capable of doing a wide range of tasks, such as aim to understand images and speech, generate audio and videos, detect patterns, answer questions and translate text.
  • 20 April 2022 – Brando Benifei and Dragoș Tudorache, Members of the European Parliament leading on the AI Act in the IMCO and LIBE committees, published their draft report.
  • 2 March 2022 – The Committee on Legal Affairs (JURI) at the European Parliament published their amendments on the AI Act. The Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) at the European Parliament published their draft opinion on the AI Act one day later.
  • 3 February 2022 – The French Presidency of the Council circulated a compromise text of Articles 16-29 of the proposed AI Act, covering the obligations of users and providers of high-risk systems. Later, the French Presidency has circulated another compromise text of Articles 40-52, which concern harmonised standards, conformity assessments and transparency obligations for certain AI systems
  • 2 February 2022 – The European Commission presented a new Standardisation Strategy outlining their approach to standards within the Single Market as well as globally. Standards are the foundation of the EU Single Market and global competitiveness.
  • 25 January 2022 – The lead committees of the European Parliament, the Internal Market and Civil Liberties committees, had their first joint exchange of views on the AI Act proposal.

2021

  • 1 December 2021 – The European Parliament’s internal market and civil liberties committees will jointly lead negotiations on the AI Act with Brando Benifei (S&D, Italy) being the lead negotiator together with Dragoş Tudorache (Renew, Romania) from the civil liberties committee. 
  • 29 November 2021 – The rotating presidency of the EU Council shared a first compromise text on the AI Act draft with major changes in the areas of social scoring, biometric recognition systems, and high-risk applications.
  • 6 August 2021 – A study analysing the use of biometric techniques from an ethical and legal perspective commissioned by the European Parliament’s Policy Department for Citizens’ Rights and Constitutional Affairs was published. 
  • 6 August 2021 – The public consultation period on the AI Act by the European Commission ended. The Commission received 304 submissions which can be read here.
  • 20 July 2021 – Slovenian Presidency of the Council of the European Union organised a virtual conference on the regulation of artificial intelligence, ethics and fundamental rights. 
  • 21 April 2021 – The Commission published a proposal to regulate artificial intelligence in the European Union.