Article 49: registration in the EU database before the system reaches the market

Paragraph 4 provides that, for high-risk AI systems referred to in points 1, 6 and 7 of Annex III, in the areas of law enforcement, migration, asylum and border control management, the registration referred to in paragraphs 1, 2 and 3 of this Article shall be in a secure non-public section of the EU database referred to in Article 71 and shall include only the following information, as applicable, referred to in: (a) Section A, points 1 to 10, of Annex VIII, with the exception of points 6, 8 and 9; (b) Section B, points 1 to 5, and points 8 and 9 of Annex VIII; (c) Section C, points 1 to 3, of Annex VIII; (d) points 1, 2, 3 and 5, of Annex IX. Only the Commission and national authorities referred to in Article 74(8) shall have access to the respective restricted sections of the EU database listed in the first subparagraph of this paragraph. Paragraph 5 provides that high-risk AI systems referred to in point 2 of Annex III shall be registered at national level.

Two readings existed of the date on this object, and Chef chose between them on 6 September 2026. Article 49 sits in Section 5 of Chapter III, and the third paragraph of Article 113 names a Section of Chapter III twice: point (b) names Section 4 and sets it at 2 August 2025, and point (c) names Sections 1, 2 and 3, with the exception of Article 6(5). Section 5 appears in neither point, nor in point (a) or point (d). Article 49 therefore falls under the general date in the second paragraph, and that is the date this object carries: 2 August 2026. Whoever places an Annex III system on the market today without registering is late, not early. The practical reading is not written away but sits alongside it: the duty only acquires an object once a high-risk AI system exists, and that status arises through Article 6(2) and Annex III on 2 December 2027, the date named in point (c) of the third paragraph as replaced by Article 1, point (40)(b), of Regulation (EU) 2026/1744. That date sits in high_risk_regime_from and the ground of the chosen date in timing_basis. The decision is recorded in data/ai-act/review/decision-d1-application-dates.json.

Paragraph 2 is the most expensive sentence in this article and it is missed systematically. Anyone invoking the Article 6(3) exception for an Annex III system believes they have stepped out of the high-risk regime. That is true for the requirements on the system, but not for the registration: it is precisely that provider that registers itself and that system in the EU database, and does so before it is placed on the market or put into service. The exception is therefore not free. It is paid for in visibility: your name, your system and the Article 6(3) condition you rely on end up in a publicly searchable register, exactly where you thought you would stay out of sight. The mistake that follows is predictable and expensive. An organisation carries out the Article 6(3) assessment properly, documents it, and skips the registration because in its mind that belongs to the high-risk regime. The result is that the database holds no trace of a choice it did in fact make deliberately, and that a regulator meets it as a party that simply failed to register the system. The matching piece of evidence already exists in this knowledge base as the registration record for the Article 6(3) route and hangs off the Annex III obligation; the object below covers registration under paragraphs 1, 3, 4 and 5. Note the sequence, finally. Registration is a precondition, not a notification afterwards. Delivering first and registering later repairs nothing: the moment the duty is breached is the placing on the market itself.

Read Article 49 together with Article 71 and with Article 26(8), because those three form a chain that in practice stalls at its weakest point. Article 71 describes the database and says who fills in which fields; Article 49 says when that must happen and by whom; Article 26(8) turns the result into a procurement condition. That last one is the sharpest: a deployer with the status of a public authority that establishes that the system it intends to use is not registered in the EU database shall not use that system and shall inform the provider or the distributor. For a supplier that means a missing registration is not an administrative backlog but a block on the public market, and the party raising it with you is your own customer. For a public sector organisation it means the check belongs in the procurement process and not at the moment of deployment. Two routes deviate and are forgotten for exactly that reason. The first is paragraph 4: for the areas of law enforcement, migration, asylum and border control management the registration moves into a secure non-public section with a shorter list of fields, and only the Commission and the national authorities referred to in Article 74(8) can look into it. That is not an exemption but a different counter, and whoever reads it as an exemption registers nothing. The second is paragraph 5: the systems in point 2 of Annex III, critical infrastructure, are registered at national level. The Regulation does not say which national register that is, so you answer that question in national law and not here. For a grid operator or a water utility that is the difference between an existing counter and a search that only starts once the system is already running.