Former Italian prime minister Mario Draghi has joined the calls to pause the rollout of the EU’s AI Act.
The bloc has faced mounting pressure to rework the law, which officially came into force in 2024 but is being rolled out in stages over two years and will apply to AI systems according to the risk they pose to society.
According to a Euronews report Draghi told a conference considering the EU’s progress in implementing recommendations he laid out in his landmark report last year that the Act is a “source of uncertainty”.
He said: “The first rules — which included the ban on 'unacceptable-risk' systems — landed without major complications. Codes of practice signed by most major developers, together with the Commission’s August guidelines, have clarified responsibilities.
“But the next stage — covering high-risk AI systems in areas like critical infrastructure and health — must be proportionate and support innovation and development. In my view, implementation of this stage should be paused until we better understand the drawbacks.”
In an open letter published in June this year dozens of Europe’s leading startups and investors — including Synthesia, Lovable and Voi — called on the EU to pause the rollout of the Act.
A month later 45 business leaders from the EU AI Champions Initiative also published an open letter to the commission calling for a two-year “clock stop” on the AI Act as the EU was considering diluting some aspects of the law.
The EU rejected those widespread industry calls to halt the Act, instead promising to simplify and streamline key pieces of the legislation.
