Brussels missed its own deadline. Again.

The European Parliament, the Council of the EU, and the European Commission spent twelve hours on Tuesday trying to agree the Digital AI Omnibus, a package of amendments designed to soften the AI Act before its high-risk product compliance deadline lands in early August. They failed. Reuters, Computerworld, and The Next Web confirmed the trilogue collapsed around 2 a.m. Wednesday Brussels time. DLA Piper's policy team published a brief Thursday confirming the next trilogue is now scheduled for May 13.

The fault line, per MLex and IAPP coverage, was Annex I. Parliament wants to move sectoral legislation, including medical devices and toys, from Section A to Section B, which would change how high-risk AI embedded inside those products gets classified. The Council pushed back. Member states want to keep their existing sectoral safety regimes intact and exclude products already covered from a second AI-specific compliance layer. Parliament wants the AI Act to bite. The Cypriot presidency, which holds the Council rotation through June, called it: there was no agreement to be had on Tuesday night.

The deadline that matters.

The August 2 deadline is what makes this fight urgent rather than procedural. That is when the high-risk obligations of the AI Act, including conformity assessments, post-market monitoring, and the registration of high-risk systems in the EU database, begin to apply to products already on the market. If the Omnibus does not land in May, the August deadline arrives with no simplification, no deferral, and no grace period for the categories of products Parliament and Council are still arguing about.

That matters for AI builders for one specific reason. The Act applies extraterritorially. American companies shipping high-risk AI into the European market, whether embedded in a medical device, an automotive system, or a toy, get caught by the August deadline regardless of how the trilogue resolves. The Omnibus was supposed to be the off-ramp. Right now, there is no off-ramp.

What May 13 actually decides.

Two outcomes are realistic. First, a narrowed deal that resolves the Annex I dispute by leaving sectoral products in Section A but adding language that prevents double-compliance burdens. That is the IAPP read on what mid-May negotiations could deliver. Second, a continued stall that pushes the Omnibus past June 30, when Ireland takes over the Council presidency and the negotiating posture resets. Ireland has historically been more deferential to industry, which would shift the dynamics in the Council's favor.

There is a third possibility nobody in Brussels wants to say out loud. The August deadline arrives, the Commission begins asking national authorities to enforce, and a coordinated wave of compliance complaints lands in front of the European Court of Justice within months. That outcome is not in anyone's interest, including Parliament's, but it is what happens when a 12-hour negotiation breaks down at 2 a.m. with the clock already running.

First reported by Reuters, with policy detail from IAPP, MLex via Luca Bertuzzi, Computerworld, and The Next Web. Trilogue scheduled for May 13, 2026, Brussels.