The European Commission's Digital Omnibus second trilogue is scheduled for 28 April 2026, twelve days from publication. The employer AI literacy obligation, which requires firms deploying AI on or alongside staff to ensure workers understand how the systems operate, was stripped from the text by Parliament on 26 March and remains contested entering the negotiations. The Cypriot Presidency is aiming for political agreement by May, with Official Journal publication targeted for July. The high-risk employment deadline under the AI Act is fixed at 2 December 2027.
The trilogue continues directly from the 1 April first trilogue , which opened with the literacy clause in dispute between Parliament and Council. If the clause survives, European workers will receive a statutory right to understand how AI is being deployed on them, which in practice means firms will need documentation, explanation and appeal pathways within twenty months. The clause's removal would leave the AI Act's high-risk employment deadline in place without the worker-facing literacy layer Parliament had built around it.
The divergence from the US position is the most concrete regulatory split on this topic. Washington's only federal measurement effort in the same period was the Hawley-Warner data-collection letter to agencies that have just proved they cannot agree on a baseline figure. Brussels is negotiating a binding statutory right, Washington is negotiating whether the question can be answered. The outcome of the 28 April trilogue is therefore the nearest-term variable on whether the two jurisdictions are likely to share a common AI workforce policy framework by the end of 2027 or proceed under materially different rules.
