{"name":"Applied AI in the European Union — the record","description":"Every announced initiative, deployment, published result and regulation of applied AI on the record for the European Union, tagged by kind, industry, region and role, sourced and dated. A slice of the State of Applied AI record, maintained continuously by the Industrial Research Unit of the Straits Institute for Applied AI.","source":"https://www.straitsai.institute/state-of-applied-ai/european-union","partOf":"https://www.straitsai.institute/state-of-applied-ai/evidence.json","attribution":"Industrial Research Unit, Straits Institute for Applied AI","updated":"2026-10-29","facet":{"kind":"country","name":"European Union","slug":"european-union","iso2":"EU","region":"Europe"},"nationalStrategy":{"name":"AI Continent Action Plan","year":2025},"counts":{"entries":10,"deployments":0,"evidenceImpact":0,"evidenceAdoption":5,"regulation":5,"industries":5,"countries":1,"linked":10},"entries":[{"kind":"regulation","industry":"HR & People","region":"European Union","text":"The EU AI Act treats AI in recruitment and employment as 'high-risk', but the Digital Omnibus (Regulation (EU) 2026/1744, in force 27 July 2026) pushed those duties from August 2026 to 2 December 2027, and embedded product AI to 2 August 2028. Article 5 prohibitions have applied since February 2025: banned now, regulated later.","date":"2026","source":"https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/regulatory-framework-ai"},{"kind":"regulation","industry":"Agriculture & Food","region":"European Union","text":"The EU's Digital Omnibus on AI, Regulation (EU) 2026/1744, took effect on 27 July 2026. It shifts the AI Act deadline for high-risk AI in Machinery Regulation products, such as harvesting robots and autonomous tractors, from August 2027 to 2 August 2028.","date":"2026","source":"https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/regulatory-framework-ai"},{"kind":"regulation","industry":"Government & Public Sector","region":"European Union","text":"The EU AI Act's high-risk AI rules for Annex III systems, covering migration, border control and law enforcement, missed their original 2 August 2026 start. The Digital Omnibus on AI, Regulation (EU) 2026/1744, moved them to 2 December 2027, taking effect on 27 July 2026, six days before the original deadline.","date":"2026","source":"https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/regulatory-framework-ai"},{"kind":"evidence-adoption","industry":"Education & Training","region":"European Union","text":"Cedefop finds AI job exposure lower on average in VET occupations than non-VET ones and projects a fairly modest 5% AI-driven employment decline in the EU. It still urges giving VET students AI skills, since graduates without them may look less employable.","date":"2026","source":"https://www.cedefop.europa.eu/files/9209_en.pdf"},{"kind":"regulation","industry":"Business Operations","region":"European Union","text":"Regulation (EU) 2026/1744, the 'AI Omnibus', took effect on 27 July 2026, delaying AI Act high-risk duties: stand-alone Annex III systems from 2 December 2027 and AI in Annex I regulated products from 2 August 2028, instead of 2 August 2026. Its AI Act simplification gives small mid-caps relief once limited to SMEs, widens regulatory sandbox access with an EU-level sandbox and eases database registration for exempted systems.","date":"2026","source":"https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/ai-omnibus-enters-force"},{"kind":"evidence-adoption","industry":"Government & Public Sector","region":"European Union","text":"The EU's Digital Europe Programme has put over €294 million into digital skills funding for upskilling, reskilling and skilling the workforce. An EU-funded AI Skills Academy launches in 2026.","date":"2026","source":"https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/digital-skills"},{"kind":"regulation","industry":"Government & Public Sector","region":"European Union","text":"EU AI Act bans in force since 2 February 2025, and unaffected by the 2026 delay to high-risk rules, cover predictive policing based only on profiling or personality traits and facial recognition databases built by untargeted internet or CCTV scraping. Police use of live remote biometric identification in public places is also barred outside narrowly defined purposes.","date":"2025","source":"https://artificialintelligenceact.eu/article/5/"},{"kind":"evidence-adoption","industry":"Education & Training","region":"European Union","text":"Cedefop's pilot European Vocational Teacher Survey of 735 VET teachers in 23 EU Member States finds 29% using AI tools often or very often. Yet 31% say AI skills for teachers need major work in spotting relevant tools, and a similar share feel unready to judge AI's ethical risks and biases.","date":"2025","source":"https://www.cedefop.europa.eu/files/6229_en.pdf"},{"kind":"evidence-adoption","industry":"Business Operations","region":"European Union","text":"AI adoption in EU enterprises with 10 or more employees reached 20.0% in 2025, 6.5 percentage points above 2024's 13.5%. Uptake climbs with company size (17% small, 30.4% medium, 55.0% large) and spans 42.0% in Denmark to 5.2% in Romania.","date":"2025","source":"https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/ddn-20251211-2"},{"kind":"evidence-adoption","industry":"Education & Training","region":"European Union","text":"Adult learning participation in the EU-27 favours the already-qualified: in 2022 just 25.1% of low-qualified adults took part, against 41.5% at medium level and 65.7% with tertiary qualifications. Adults holding a medium-level vocational qualification took part less than general-education peers at that level, 40.7% against 44.1%.","date":"2022","source":"https://www.cedefop.europa.eu/en/data-insights/adult-education-and-training-statistics-overview"}]}