How to Comply with the EU AI Act. A step-by-step guide for companies
The EU Artificial Intelligence Act is the world’s first horizontal law for AI. It entered into force on 1 August 2024 and introduces fines of up to €35 million or 7 % of global turnover for non-compliance. Beyond the headlines, the Act gives businesses a common rule-book, offering legal certainty while aiming to safeguard health, safety and fundamental rights. These are the key dates that matter.
The Act in plain English
Unacceptable risk – practices banned outright (e.g. real-time biometric categorisation, social scoring). Guidelines issued by the Commission in Feb 2025 clarify these bans with practical examples.
High risk – AI listed in Annex III (biometrics, recruitment, credit-scoring, etc.) or safety components of regulated products. Strict duties apply to providers, deployers, importers and distributors.
Limited risk – systems that interact with people or generate content must meet transparency rules (e.g. label deepfakes).
Minimal risk – most everyday AI (spam filters, games) face no new obligations but must avoid drifting into higher-risk uses.
Here is a practical compliance model
What to expect in Q4? Slow growth is the new normal. Q4 most companies will face a double squeeze. In Europe, the AI Act’s bans are already active and the first big compliance deadlines land in August, exposing companies to fines of up to €35 million or 7% of turnover; most will need to ring-fence roughly half to one per cent of EU revenue for audits and technical files. At the same time the United States, the EU and Mexico are poised to slap 30% tariffs on one another’s goods, lifting effective landed costs by 10–15% once brokerage and bond fees are counted. Is likely that supply chains managers will front-loaded shipments in September, followed by a sharp dip and a scramble to add local content to meet 20% US value-add thresholds.
Against this backdrop global growth stays sluggish, equities wobble as earnings absorb higher duties, and credit spreads widen. Boards that move faster, re-pricing exports, redesigning products to build value locally and finishing AI-Act documentation early, should cushion margins and build trust while slower rivals chase compliance and scramble for new suppliers.
Now Imagine….
That every person in a company knowing exactly how their everyday decisions affect carbon, cost and compliance. When staff are trained to source locally, choose low-carbon routes and design for reuse, lean regional supply chains become the norm. That means only a small share of a product’s value attracts the impending 30% tariffs, and many goods pass the 20% local-value test that can soften those duties.
The same training also instils life-cycle audits, material traceability and clear impact metrics , which plug straight into the EU AI Act’s technical-file template. Instead of having to find an extra 0.5 to 1% of EU revenue for compliance, companies could limit the new spend to nearer 0.2%.
There is a clear business pay-off. A workforce that lives and breathes sustainability cuts freight and duty costs, brings audit-ready data to regulators and earns a trust premium from investors and customers.
Investing in training your teams in sustainability is not a nice-to-have, it is a practical insurance policy that protects margins and reputation.
