AI Act Article 70 sets out the national supervisory architecture for the Regulation. Each Member State must establish or designate at least one notifying authority and at least one market surveillance authority, must communicate their identities to the Commission, must designate one market surveillance authority to act as the single point of contact, and must publish how those authorities can be contacted. Article 70 also imposes independence and impartiality duties on the national competent authorities and on their members. The designation deadline for the contact-information obligation is 2 August 2025. For a compliance director juggling DORA, NIS2, and the AI Act across several Member States at once, this is the article that answers a basic but often unclear question: which national body is actually responsible for AI Act supervision where you operate, and that answer is not the same in every Member State.
Who Article 70 binds
Article 70 binds Member States and the national competent authorities they designate. Members of those authorities (the individuals exercising the powers) are also addressed directly. The Article does not impose obligations on AI system providers or deployers; for provider and deployer duties under the high-risk regime see Articles 16, 25, and 26 of the AI Act.
Article 70 obligations
Designation of notifying and market surveillance authorities
Article 70 requires that "each Member State shall establish or designate at least one notifying authority and at least one market surveillance authority for the purposes of this Regulation." The notifying authority is the body responsible for assessing, designating, and monitoring conformity assessment bodies under Articles 28 to 39. The market surveillance authority polices high-risk AI systems placed on the market under the Market Surveillance Regulation (EU) 2019/1020 framework, with the AI Act extensions in Articles 74 and 79.
Independence and impartiality of national competent authorities
Article 70 obligates national competent authorities to "exercise their powers independently, impartially and without bias to safeguard objectivity and ensure application of the Regulation." For multinational deployers, this is the legal anchor for procedural challenges where a national authority's designation or supervisory practice raises bias concerns.
Conduct of authority members
Members of national competent authorities are individually obligated to "refrain from any action incompatible with their duties." This is the personal-conduct counterpart to the institutional independence duty: it travels with the individual exercising the supervisory power, not just with the authority as a body.
Communication of identity to the Commission
Member States "shall communicate to the Commission the identity of the notifying authorities and market surveillance authorities, their tasks, and any subsequent changes." This obligation is continuous: changes to authority structure must be notified as they happen, not only at the initial designation.
Public contact information by 2 August 2025
Article 70 requires Member States to "make publicly available information on how competent authorities and single points of contact can be contacted through electronic communication means." The deadline encoded for this obligation is 2 August 2025, aligning with the early phase of AI Act application (the Article 6(1) high-risk regime applies from 2 August 2026 as written, provisionally 2 December 2027 for Annex III under the Digital Omnibus; supervisory infrastructure was front-loaded to 2 August 2025).
Single point of contact
Article 70 obligates Member States to "designate a market surveillance authority to act as the single point of contact for this Regulation," and to "notify the Commission of the identity of the single point of contact." The single point of contact is the body cross-border deployers and providers should approach for AI-Act-specific market surveillance matters; it is also the channel through which AI Office cooperation under Article 64 flows in practice.
Cross-references
The candidate row for this article does not list direct cross-references in the Fontvera link table; the practical adjacencies are AI Act Article 64 (AI Office), Articles 74 and 79 (market surveillance specifics), and Regulation (EU) 2019/1020 on market surveillance, which Article 74 builds on.
What this means in practice
For a provider or deployer of a high-risk AI system — including a payment institution, EMI, fintech, or insurer — Article 70 is the address-book article: it tells you which authority you will deal with for conformity assessment notifications (the notifying authority), which authority will supervise the system once on the market (the market surveillance authority), and which body to approach for cross-border issues (the single point of contact). Compliance teams operating across several Member States should map each jurisdiction to its designated authorities and single point of contact, and should track Article 70 communications to the Commission for changes, since the designated authority and its structure can differ from one Member State to the next. Where an authority's contact information is not yet public, the 2 August 2025 deadline is the legal anchor for raising the issue. Fontvera tracks this designation, and how it diverges across Member States, against primary sources rather than summarising it from memory.