Filed under compliance-costs.

The Orphan Line Item

The EU AI Act's high-risk AI obligations became enforceable in August 2026 with no harmonised standards published and almost no notified bodies designated — the infrastructure the regulation assumed would exist. What arrives instead is a bill finance did not forecast: third-party conformity assessment at €50,000–150,000 per system, months-long queues for notified-body slots, and recurring annual costs at 20–40% of initial spend. The compliance deadline has moved; the invoice has not.