The abandonment significantly tightens the timeline to avoid legal uncertainty, since new rules for high-risk AI applications are set to kick in this August. EU legislators had rushed to meet an informal end-of-April deadline to agree on delaying those rules.
The talks derailed over a request by the center-right in Parliament, backed by Germany, to allow key products, such as machinery and medical devices, to comply with AI requirements under sectoral law rather than the AI Act.
German top officials, including Chancellor Friedrich Merz, are pushing for less strict rules for industrial AI, in a bid to give engineering firms such as Siemens and Bosch a boost.
But the proposal is strongly opposed by several EU countries and by the center-left.
Talks are expected to resume, with no date for that yet scheduled.