Why does the EU AI Act treat hiring AI as high-risk?

Because the law classifies AI by what it can do to people, and few systems can do more to a person than one that decides whether they get a job. Annex III, point 4 covers two families of systems. Point 4(a): AI intended for "the recruitment or selection of natural persons, in particular to place targeted job…

What did the Digital Omnibus actually change for HR?

On 24 July 2026 the Digital Omnibus on AI, Regulation (EU) 2026/1744, was published in the Official Journal and entered into force on 27 July 2026. For HR, three things matter.

Which HR tools are in scope, and which are not?

In scope, based on the Annex III wording: CV screening and parsing tools that filter or shortlist, candidate ranking and matching engines, sourcing tools that decide who sees your job ads, video interview platforms that score answers, game-based or psychometric assessments that produce a hiring score, internal…

What must an employer do as deployer before December 2027?

The AI Act splits duties between providers (who build the system) and deployers (who use it). An employer running a vendor's screening tool is a deployer, and Article 26 is your checklist. In plain language:

Which eight questions should you send your HR tech vendors?

Vendor due diligence is where deployers win or lose this. Send these eight questions in writing, and keep the answers:

AI in hiring is high-risk: EU AI act, deadline december 2026

Hiring AI is high-risk under the EU AI Act. Deployer duties, eight vendor questions and a 15-month plan to be ready for 2 December 2027.

If your company uses software to filter CVs, rank candidates or score video interviews, the EU AI Act already has a name for that software: high-risk. Annex III, point 4 of the regulation lists AI used in employment and worker management among the high-risk domains, next to credit scoring, education and law enforcement. That classification has not changed in 2026, and it will not change before the rules bite.

What changed is the date. The Digital Omnibus, in force since 27 July 2026, moved the compliance deadline for these stand-alone high-risk systems from 2 August 2026 to 2 December 2027. Sixteen months of breathing room, and a trap for anyone who reads it as a cancellation: HR software procurement cycles routinely run a year, and half of the compliance work (the inventory, the vendor answers, the worker information plan) has dependencies you do not control.