Kilde › Guides › AI Act Art 50 › Article 50 penalties: the €15M/3% tier…
Current to 26 August 2026 · updates land in the changelog.
Transparency is not the cheap seats of the AI Act. Non-compliance with Article 50 sits in Article 99(4): administrative fines up to €15,000,000 or 3% of total worldwide annual turnover, whichever is higher.
Article 99(6) flips the formula for small players: for SMEs and startups, the cap is whichever of the two amounts is lower. A bootstrapped app maker faces 3% of its own turnover as ceiling, not €15M — proportionality written into the fine structure itself. For everyone else, “whichever is higher” means the percentage governs at scale.
The penalties chapter has been live since 2 August 2025, national market-surveillance authorities enforce, and Article 50's duties became enforceable 2 August 2026 — with a complaints route open from day one. As of our verification date there were zero public Article 50 enforcement actions — weeks into applicability, that is expected, and it is the calm-before window: the powers exist, the fine levels are defined, and first-mover enforcement tends to land on visible consumer-facing gaps. The only transition still running is the 2 December marking grace for pre-August systems.
Three artifacts, in order of leverage: visible compliance on the duties with no grace (disclosure lines, labels — the things an authority sees first); a marking implementation with survival evidence for 50(2); and a documented scope analysis for anything you decided is exempt or excluded — obviousness calls, assistive exclusions, the B2B carve-out. Code of Practice signatories add the cleanest demonstration route: adequacy was endorsed in July 2026 and signatories can rely on its measures to demonstrate compliance for 50(2), (4) and (5) — late accession remains open.
The AI Act Article 50 Kit: the disclosure copy library (English + 中文), the marking implementation guide with survival-test protocol, deepfake and text-labeling walkthroughs, obviousness and scope memos, the evidence log, the Code of Practice accession path — built from the regulation and the final guidelines, with pinpoint citations.
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General information only — not legal advice, and no clearance opinions. Sources are Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 (Articles 50 and 99), Regulation (EU) 2026/1744, the Commission's final Article 50 guidelines of 20 July 2026 (non-binding) and our audited kit research. Marking-technology status changes fast: treat vendor announcements as live only once verified. © 2026 Kilde.
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