The EU AI Act Simplification deal aka Digital Omnibus just got sealed. Machinery exits the Act. But the Commission kept delegated acts authority to write AI requirements back in later - on a timeline nobody has committed to, against requirements that don't exist yet.

Parliament wanted every Annex I product out. Council blocked it. What they agreed on instead is worse: an implementing acts mechanism that lets sectors argue their way out one by one, wherever their existing rules are "similar enough."

That word is now the most expensive word in EU regulation. The framework didn't break. It got an escape hatch.