Official Journal

The Official Journal of the European Union (OJ) is the gazette of record for all EU legislation, regulations, directives, and decisions. Once a legislative text is published in the Official Journal, it enters force at the date specified and becomes binding across all 27 member states. For any EU regulation, the OJ publication date is the definitive legal start of transposition clocks and compliance deadlines.

In the context of the EU Digital Omnibus and AI Act amendments, OJ publication is the final step after trilogue agreement and European Parliament ratification. The Cypriot Presidency has set July 2026 as the target for OJ publication of the Digital Omnibus amendments, which include contested changes to the AI Act's high-risk employment provisions. The 2 December 2027 deadline for high-risk employment AI compliance runs from the OJ publication date, making July 2026 the anchor for when that clock starts.

The employer AI literacy obligation — stripped by Parliament on 26 March 2026 and remaining contested as of the 28 April 2026 second trilogue — would, if reinstated, also enter force through OJ publication. Its absence or presence in the final text will determine whether EU workers have a statutory right to understand AI deployed against them before 2027.