AI Act Implementing Act – Articles 75c-75d: Procedure Is Structure

Statement by GISAD – Global Institute for Structure relevance, Anonymity and Decentralisation

GISAD welcomes the draft implementing regulation in principle: an enforcement authority without procedural rules would be arbitrariness on letterhead. Through the Digital Omnibus, the EU AI Office has been given the competence to rule over the AI systems of the largest platforms and model houses – procedural rules for that task are structure, not bureaucracy. Yet three provisions of the draft invert procedural protection into its opposite.

The restartable clock

Six investigative steps, from a request for information to a structured dialogue, each restart the five-year limitation period – capped at ten years, and suspensions can push it beyond. This is not limitation but a negotiating lever: the authority decides when the clock runs again. A deadline that binds only the investigated party, and never the investigator, is structurally one-sided. Interruptions must be tied to formal procedural acts, not to every request. And the ten-year cap must be an absolute cap.

Defence only for corporate budgets

Broad access to confidential file material is reserved for external advisers – the in-house engineers who know the system best are excluded. A small model provider cannot afford a firm of expensive experts; a corporation can. The result is a two-tier defence, graded by bank balance rather than by the merits. The circle of access should be extended to bound internal technical staff, or access must be structurally enabled for small and mid-sized operators – otherwise the procedure protects precisely those it is meant to restrain.

Whoever verifies must itself be verifiable

The AI Office investigates, decides and imposes fines – and recovers its own investigation costs from the operator, without functional separation between investigation and decision. That is an incentive structure which demands to be measured: auditable procedural records, and the obligation to publish decisions (Article 75d(4) – welcome) complemented by an annual enforcement report with measured indicators. And the preamble must cite Regulation (EU) 2026/1744 – a legal act that omits its own legal basis creates no legal certainty.

GISAD – Global Institute for Structure relevance, Anonymity and Decentralisation · Registered in the EU Transparency Register, No. 244298340978-40

Sources: European Commission – Have your say: AI Act Implementing Act – Articles 75c-75d · EUR-Lex – Regulation (EU) 2026/1744 (Digital Omnibus on AI)