The EU AI Act’s Alignment within the European Union’s Regulatory Framework on Artificial Intelligence

Summary The European Union (EU) Artificial Intelligence (AI) Act is the first horizontal regulation on AI, aiming to regulate the development, placement on the market, and use of AI systems in the EU. The initial proposal was published by the European Commission (EC) in April 2021, and after an intensive three-year period of discussions, revisions, and negotiations, on December 9, 2023, a provisional agreement was reached on the final text. This marked the culmination of a series of ethical policy and legislative foundations that have created a broad and highly influential regulatory framework on AI in the EU. However, the consistency of the final draft within this established institutional environment on AI merits a close examination. This paper studies the AI Act text and its alignment within this framework. It will use the partial institutional analysis method to map the regulatory landscape, identify the most important sources within the said scope, and critically assess their consistency.