Eva Marečková

prEN 18229 will become the harmonised route to presumption of conformity for AI Act Articles 12 to 14. Whether SMEs can actually use it depends on details that only deployers notice: retention periods that are bounded, logs that non-specialist staff can read, a mechanism for a small deployer to obtain conformant logs from an off-the-shelf provider, and oversight competence expressed as tasks rather than qualifications. My comments target exactly these points, grounded in documented deployments with SMEs (a 250-person service provider, small hospitality and construction operators). If adopted, they lower the compliance cost of high-risk AI for the enterprise segment least able to hire compliance staff, reduce dependence on large providers, and make European AI standards a market-access asset rather than a barrier. Medium term this supports faster, safer AI adoption in SMEs; long term it keeps presumption of conformity real for small firms, not only for large ones.