The European Commission has issued the first enforcement action under the EU AI Act. An €18 million fine against a Dutch recruitment platform that shipped a high-risk hiring system into the EU market without a fundamental rights impact assessment, and with bias testing the Commission described as materially incomplete. The decision, published on 4 April 2026, is the first under Article 99 since the Act's high-risk obligations bit on 2 August 2025. Three findings drove the size of the fine. No fundamental rights impact assessment on file at deployment. Bias testing limited to a single protected attribute, with no intersectional analysis. And operator-side logging that the regulator's auditors could not reconstruct from the records held. The platform has indicated it will appeal. The signal is the part Australian operators should read closely. The Commission is not waiting for harm. The penalty is being sized off documentation gaps alone. If you are deploying high-risk AI into the EU under the Brussels effect, the next audit conversation just got more expensive. *TheAICommand. Intelligence, At Your Command.*
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TheAICommand. Intelligence, At Your Command.