Practical requirements extracted from policy instruments, with the source article, the actors they bind, evidence examples and original framework mappings. Legal requirements are marked; everything else is voluntary guidance.
A distributor, importer, deployer or other third party is treated as the provider of a high-risk AI system, with all Article 16 duties, if it puts its own name or trademark on a system already on the market, makes a substantial modification to a high-risk system that stays high-risk, or changes the intended purpose of a system so that it becomes high-risk. The original provider then ceases to be provider for that system but must cooperate and supply the information and access needed for the new provider to comply.
Verified (a factual check against the official source, not a legal review)Applies from 2 Dec 2027
Legal requirementGovernance and accountability·European Union
A deployer using a high-risk post-remote biometric identification system in a criminal investigation must request authorisation from a judicial or independent administrative authority in advance or within 48 hours, unless the use is only the initial identification of a potential suspect on objective and verifiable facts. Use is limited to a targeted search; if authorisation is refused, use stops and the data is deleted. No adverse legal decision may rest solely on the output, each use is documented, and the deployer reports annually to the market surveillance and data protection authorities.
Verified (a factual check against the official source, not a legal review)Applies from 2 Dec 2027
Legal requirementGovernance and accountability·European Union
Before making a high-risk AI system available in the Union, a provider established outside the EU must appoint, by written mandate, an authorised representative established in the Union. The representative verifies that the EU declaration of conformity and technical documentation exist and that conformity assessment was done, keeps the provider's contact details and the documentation available for ten years, supplies information to authorities, cooperates with them, and must end the mandate if the provider acts contrary to the Regulation.
Verified (a factual check against the official source, not a legal review)Applies from 2 Dec 2027
Legal requirementGovernance and accountability·European Union
Before placing a general-purpose AI model on the Union market, a provider established in a third country must appoint, by written mandate, an authorised representative established in the Union. The representative checks that the Annex XI documentation exists and the Article 53 duties are met, keeps a copy of the documentation and the provider's contact details for ten years after market placement, provides information to the AI Office on request, cooperates with authorities, and must end the mandate if the provider breaches the Regulation. Open-source models without systemic risk are exempt.
Verified (a factual check against the official source, not a legal review)Applies from 2 Aug 2025
Legal requirementGovernance and accountability·European Union
Article 16 lists what a provider of a high-risk AI system owes: compliance with the Section 2 requirements, its name and contact details on the system or its documentation, a quality management system, retention of documentation and logs, conformity assessment, an EU declaration of conformity, CE marking, registration, corrective action when needed, cooperation with authorities on request, and accessibility in line with the EU accessibility directives.
Verified (a factual check against the official source, not a legal review)Applies from 2 Dec 2027
Legal requirementGovernance and accountability·European Union
On a reasoned request from a national competent authority, a provider of a high-risk AI system must supply all the information and documentation needed to show that the system meets the Section 2 requirements, in a language the authority can readily understand, and must give the authority access to the automatically generated logs it holds. Authorities must treat what they receive as confidential under Article 78.
Verified (a factual check against the official source, not a legal review)Applies from 2 Dec 2027
Legal requirementGovernance and accountability·European Union
A provider whose general-purpose AI model meets the Article 51(1)(a) high-impact capability condition, which is presumed once cumulative training compute exceeds 10^25 floating-point operations, must notify the Commission without delay and in any event within two weeks of the condition being met or of learning that it will be met. The notification may include arguments that the model nonetheless does not present systemic risk; the Commission decides and keeps a public list of designated models.
Verified (a factual check against the official source, not a legal review)Applies from 2 Aug 2025
Legal requirementGovernance and accountability·European Union
Deployers of high-risk AI must take technical and organisational measures to use systems according to the instructions, assign human oversight, ensure input data is relevant where they control it, monitor operation, inform the provider and authorities of risks or serious incidents, keep logs, inform workers' representatives before deploying at the workplace, inform affected natural persons where decisions are made about them, and cooperate with authorities.
Pending review (a factual check against the official source, not a legal review)Applies from 2 Dec 2027
A single practical requirement pulled out of an instrument and stated on its own: keep a risk management system, log incidents, document training data, provide human oversight, and so on. Each one cites the article or section it comes from so you can check it against the source.
Does a voluntary obligation have legal force?
No, and every obligation is labelled either a legal requirement or voluntary guidance. Voluntary items still matter in practice, because procurement questionnaires and auditors ask about them, but only the binding ones carry legal consequence.
How do I find the obligations that apply to my organisation?
Filter by jurisdiction, category, actor, sector or use case. The applicability check asks a short set of questions and returns the duties that may reach you. It is an educational screen, not a legal determination, and it says so.
Why do some instruments have no obligations listed?
Because nobody has broken them out yet. Most instruments are recorded at summary level first; obligations are added jurisdiction by jurisdiction. The coverage and open-gaps pages publish exactly what is missing rather than hiding it.
