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Soft law

Alongside the binding text of Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 and the other regulatory acts of the EU digital acquis, a number of soft-law instruments operate in practice — formally non-binding but with substantial effects on actual implementation: codes of practice approved under Article 56 of the AI Act, interpretive guidelines of the Commission, recommendations of the European Data Protection Board (EDPB), opinions of the AI Board, sectoral codes of conduct under Article 95 of the AI Act.

This section collects the main soft-law instruments relevant to the AI Act and to its points of intersection with other EU acts.

Published instruments

  • GPAI Code of Practice

    Code of Practice for General-Purpose AI models — voluntary tool prepared under the facilitation of the European Commission's AI Office pursuant to Article 56 of the AI Act, structured in three chapters (Transparency, Copyright, Safety and Security) and confirmed on 1 August 2025 as adequate to demonstrate compliance with the obligations of Articles 53 and 55 of the AI Act.

    GPAI Code of Practice

Coming soon

Dedicated pages are planned for the following soft-law instruments:

  • Commission Guidelines on the scope of GPAI obligations (18 July 2025)
  • EDPB Guidelines on the intersections between AI Act and GDPR
  • AI Board Opinions on systemic risk and GPAI models
  • Sectoral codes of conduct under Article 95 of the AI Act

Conceptual distinction

The documents collected in this section are not normative acts — they have no force of law in the technical sense. They nevertheless perform substantial functions of significance:

  • they constitute means to demonstrate compliance with the obligations of binding normative acts (e.g. the GPAI Code of Practice with respect to Articles 53 and 55 of the AI Act);
  • they guide the supervisory and enforcement activity of competent authorities (Commission, AI Office, national authorities, EDPB);
  • they influence the determination of administrative fines as mitigating or aggravating factors;
  • they anticipate the adoption of European harmonised standards which, at full implementation, will provide presumption of conformity under Article 40 of the AI Act.

For the full text of binding normative acts of the European Union, see the section Normative acts → European Union.

Last revision: 27 April 2026