AI Omnibus: A missed opportunity to simplify Europe’s path to innovation

AI Omnibus: A missed opportunity to simplify Europe’s path to innovation

By Ben Brake

The agreement reached last Thursday morning on the AI Omnibus concludes a highly anticipated negotiation: the first real attempt by EU institutions to simplify an increasingly complex digital regulatory framework.

But does the outcome truly live up to the European Commission’s objective of making AI regulation more streamlined, coherent, and innovation-friendly?

We argue much was lost along the way.

From regulation to simplification: a new phase

The AI Omnibus comes at a moment of transition in EU policymaking. Following an unprecedented wave of legislation that sought to position the European Union as a global leader in AI regulation, the focus is now shifting towards effective implementation.

The AI Act sits alongside already existing instruments such as the General Data Protection Regulation, the Digital Services Act, and the Cybersecurity Act. In this context, the risk of duplication and inconsistency is real, potentially creating legal uncertainty for businesses and barriers to innovation.

The question is therefore no longer whether to regulate AI, but how to make this regulatory framework workable – avoiding overlaps, fragmentation and inefficiencies.

DOT Europe’s perspective: simplification as a catalyst for innovation

From the outset, DOT Europe has strongly supported the need for an ambitious yet balanced simplification exercise: one that reduces unnecessary burdens and regulatory overlaps, enables innovation and competitiveness and fully preserves the protection of fundamental rights.

In this regard, the Commission’s proposal represented a first step in the right direction. In our positions, we have constantly put forward practical measures to ensure effective and predictable implementation of the AI Act, including:

• Introducing clear and fixed compliance deadlines for high-risk AI systems;
• Maintaining and extending transitional periods for generative AI labelling requirements, ensuring legal certainty for new systems placed on the market;
• Reduce duplication between the AI Act and sectoral rules by aligning requirements and simplifying compliance assessment;
• Avoiding unnecessary obligations, such as registration requirements for AI systems that are not classified as high-risk.

In our view, these measures would not weaken regulation. On the contrary, they would be essential to making it enforceable, predictable, and conducive to innovation (especially for smaller companies). For DOT Europe, simplification is about strengthening the effectiveness of the rules, not diluting them.

A disappointing outcome

Against this backdrop, the final text of the AI Omnibus raises several concerns.

While the agreement retains some positive elements, such as the postponement of deadlines for high-risk systems, it also expands the scope of the initiative and, more importantly, removes or significantly alters many of the simplification measures originally proposed by the Commission, in particular the reduced grace period for AI-generated content (4 months instead of 6 as originally proposed by the European Commission).

The result is at least a partial reversal of the initial approach, highlighting a deeper political tension: the European Commission’s ambition to deliver meaningful simplification has collided with a far more conservative stance from both the Parliament and the Council.

Both co-legislators have shown reluctance to streamline existing obligations, rolling back several key elements of the original proposal. While this caution may be driven by concerns over deregulation, it has in practice limited the scope of the initiative and weakened the objective of building a more agile, innovation-friendly regulatory framework.

For DOT Europe, this outcome raises a broader question: is there truly a shared institutional commitment to creating a framework that supports innovation?

The risk of ineffective over-regulation

The core issue is that more regulation does not necessarily mean better protection.

Excessive regulatory complexity can create uncertainty, increase compliance costs, and ultimately slow AI adoption, undermining Europe’s competitiveness.

In seeking to avoid the risk of deregulation, co-legislators have missed an important opportunity to address the problem of regulatory overlaps. This goes against one of the main original objectives of the Omnibus: to improve coherence in the framework without compromising the protection of fundamental rights.

Looking ahead: a lesson for the broader simplification exercise

The AI Omnibus offers valuable lessons for the way forward, particularly for the upcoming Digital Omnibus and the broader Digital Fitness Check.

If the goal is truly to strengthen Europe’s global competitiveness, as highlighted in the reports by Enrico Letta and Mario Draghi, simplification must go beyond political rhetoric and translate into concrete action.

For DOT Europe, this means adopting a more consistent and forward-looking approach: clearly defining the desired outcomes from the outset and ensure that policy choices are aligned with them throughout the legislative process.

The ambition to make Europe a true “AI continent” depends on it. The AI Omnibus represents a disappointing first episode in the simplification agenda. The next one – the Digital Omnibus – cannot afford the same gap between ambition and delivery.