The importance of acting quick;

but for who?

The Digital Omnibus on AI is running over European values, rights and fairness

Brussels, 12^th May 2026

Our concern

The European Writers’ Council (EWC) express its concern regarding the provisional agreement to postpone the entry into force of the AI Act in areas such as security and high risk uses, which in crucial cases would be delayed from August 2026 to August 2028.

PDF: Postponement of the AI Act

De-Regulation sold as “Simplification”

The legislative proposal on Digital Omnibus on AI is part of the seventh digital omnibus package announced as “simplification”, proposed by the European Commission in November 2025. These rather de-regulations than simplifications also as undermining democratic legislation processes criticised packages were supposed to boost European competitiveness, e.g. by claiming to harmonise overlapping legislation and regulations or so-called simplification of administration for small to medium sized companies, therefore strengthen again a business- and tech-friendly approach only.

A Lack of Respect for European Values

The recent political agreement reached on the above-mentioned proposal, if adapted by the European Parliament and the Council of the EU, shows once more at least partial lack of respect of European values, rights and fairness, as it will mostly favour non-European big tech companies and harm the indispensable human asset of European multilingual cultural wealth and knowledge.

We therefore denounce the absence of inclusive public consultations with all affected stakeholders, along with the lack of thorough impact assessments.

Ongoing violation of authors’ rights and copyright

Although some of the measures proposed in this agreement are unquestionably positive, such as the EU ban on nudifiers and on AI-enabled creation of child sexual abuse material, there are certain points that perpetuate the authors’ rights and copyright violations already caused by the massive implementation of so-called generative AI in recent years:

• The EWC agrees with European legislators that technological tools for labelling and watermarking, as well as for detecting AI-generated or AI-manipulated texts, are still limited in some areas. However, this should be an invitation to improve them and to allocate funding for research in those fields, rather than to postpone the entry into force of the AI Act in areas such as security and high-risk uses.
• The need to clarify certain aspects of the AI Act should not act as a postponement on its implementation, but should instead be the priority of legislators in providing legal certainty to civil society, authors, other rightsholders, organisations, institutions and companies , in line with what was set out in the resolution on “Copyright and generative artificial intelligence – opportunities and challenges”, adopted by the European Parliament in March. The resolution mentioned for example the need to clarify the text and data mining exception, and the call for full transparency related to European works for the development of nonEuropean AI products.
• Any measure that would exempt large technology companies from requesting the express authorisation of the authors whose works they use, that would not require them to remunerate such authorised uses, and that would not oblige them to be transparent in labelling, would continue the serious violation of the most essential authors’ rights, represented by the ART principle: Authorisation, Remuneration and Transparency.

Necessary: A quick and urgent movement for authors’ rights

With the announcement of these proposed measures, the co-rapporteur for the Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee, Arba Kokalari (EPP, SE), declared: “With this agreement, we show that politics can move as quickly as technology”.

The EWC regrets to see it in exactly the opposite way. That is why we urge European legislators to be truly quick and efficient in finding solutions that can guarantee scrupulous respect for the rights of European authors, and to reconsider this delay, which would represent yet another attack on the rights of our authors, who are one of the primary drivers of innovation in Europe.

PDF: Postponement of the AI Act

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About the European Writers’ Council (EWC) and Contact

The EWC is the world’s largest federation of writers in the book sector and of all genres (fiction, non-fiction, academic, children’s books, poetry, etc.). With 52 organisations and professional guilds from 34 countries of the EU, the EEA and of non-EU areas, the EWC represents 250.000 writers and translators, writing and publishing altogether in 37 languages. The EWC is the world’s leading federation for the defence of book authors’ rights since 1977.

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