Article 54: authorised representative of a provider of a GPAI model

Article 113(3)(b) provides that Chapter III Section 4, Chapter V, Chapter VII and Chapter XII and Article 78 shall apply from 2 August 2025, with the exception of Article 101. Article 54 sits in Chapter V and therefore applies from 2 August 2025.

Article 101(1) provides that the Commission may impose on providers of general-purpose AI models fines not exceeding 3 percent of their annual total worldwide turnover in the preceding financial year or EUR 15 000 000, whichever is higher. Article 101 is excluded by Article 113(3)(b) from the earlier application of Chapter XII and has therefore applied since 2 August 2026. The obligation in Article 54 has thus applied since 2 August 2025, while the Commission fining power behind it exists only since 2 August 2026.

Providers of general-purpose AI models that have been placed on the market before 2 August 2025 shall take the necessary steps in order to comply with the obligations laid down in the Regulation by 2 August 2027.

This article touches two parties that rarely see themselves that way. The first is the model provider outside the Union that assumes nothing is required until a European customer asks: paragraph 1 places the appointment before the placing on the market, so the representative should exist before the first user in the Union can access the model. The second is the European party that accepts the mandate. It is not stepping into a mailbox role, but note how paragraph 3 is built: the first sentence obliges it to perform the tasks the mandate assigns to it, and only then does the article list what the mandate empowers it to do. Points (a) to (d) are therefore mandate content and empowerment, and its duty runs through them. That is where this article leaves its sharpest question open: is a representative that accepts a mandate omitting task (a) or (b) itself in breach, or does the failure rest entirely with the provider that drew up the mandate. We read paragraph 3 as making the list mandatory minimum content, so that a mandate lacking it does not satisfy the article, which leaves the provider answerable under paragraph 1 and the representative answerable for what it did accept. A defensible alternative reading is that a representative signing without those powers takes on a task it cannot discharge and thereby falls short itself. So do not assume the ten year retention in point (b) rests on you automatically, or automatically does not; write it out. Paragraph 5 closes this off in a way that is often missed: a representative that considers, or has reason to consider, that the provider is breaching its obligations terminates the mandate and immediately informs the AI Office. That is a duty rather than a power, and it calls for access to the documentation agreed in advance and for a moment at which that access is tested.

Three things about the timeline and the scope. First, the difference between duty and enforcement: the duty has applied since 2 August 2025, but Article 101 is excluded from the earlier application, so the Commission can only fine since 2 August 2026. For a provider outside the Union discovering today that it has no representative, that means: in breach for well over a year, and now also exposed to a fine. Second, the relationship with Article 22. That article carries the same figure for high-risk AI systems, starting on 2 December 2027 and 2 August 2028; Article 54 is the separate route for general-purpose AI models and has applied since 2 August 2025. Anyone looking up the role of authorised representative finds both and needs to know which route applies. Third, the trigger in paragraph 1. The Regulation fixes the moment of placing on the market less sharply for a model than for a system, and for a model made available only through an interface from a third country there is no case law. We read the duty as starting once the model is made available to users in the Union in the course of a commercial activity, because paragraph 1 attaches to placing on the market and not to establishment in the Union. A defensible alternative reading is that making a model available through an interface is not placing the model itself on the market, so that the duty only arises on an actual supply of the model.