Penalties regime (Article 99)
Set of penalties and other enforcement measures each Member State must lay down for infringements of the Regulation, within the limits and conditions the Regulation itself sets in Article 99.
The Regulation sets the maximum amounts of the fines (Article 99(3) to (5)); each Member State lays down the penalties regime and its enforcement, and whatever the Regulation does not cap.
Which obligations it carries
A legal obligation of the Member States, not of companies: Article 99(1) tasks them with laying down the regime. Applicable from 2 August 2025. The three tiers the Regulation sets as maximum limits are: non-compliance with the prohibition of the practices of Article 5, up to EUR 35 000 000 or, if the offender is an undertaking, up to 7 % of its total worldwide annual turnover for the preceding financial year, whichever is higher; non-compliance with the obligations listed in Article 99(4) — those of providers under Article 16, authorised representatives under Article 22, importers under Article 23, distributors under Article 24, providers and operators under Article 25(2) and (4), deployers under Article 26, notified bodies under Articles 31, 33 and 34, and the transparency obligations of Article 50 — up to EUR 15 000 000 or 3 %, whichever is higher; and the supply of incorrect, incomplete or misleading information to notified bodies or national competent authorities in reply to a request, up to EUR 7 500 000 or 1 %, whichever is higher. For infringements not listed in Article 99(4), the applicable regime is the one each Member State lays down through Article 99(1).
What it is not
They are not tariffs: they are ceilings. Article 99(7) requires taking into account all relevant circumstances of the case — the nature, gravity and duration of the infringement, the number of persons affected, previous penalties for the same conduct, the size and turnover of the operator, aggravating and mitigating factors. And the amount rule is inverted for small companies: where the general rule applies the higher of the two amounts, Article 99(6) applies the lower to SMEs, and Article 99(6a) — added by Regulation (EU) 2026/1744 — does the same for small mid-cap enterprises with respect to paragraphs 4 and 5.
The nuance almost nobody captures
This entry describes the limits the Regulation sets and says nothing about the Spanish regime: the rule that specifies it through Article 99(1) is a matter of national law, and this entry neither asserts nor anticipates it.
Related terms
To find out more
- Who enforces the AI Act in Spain: AESIA and what a market surveillance action looks like
- The EUR 35 million fines — and the paragraph almost nobody quotes
- What doesn't happen if you do nothing: there is no automatic penalty for not having an inventory
- Market surveillance from 2 August: what they can ask you, and who