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How the instruments relate

AI governance instruments in rising order of force, from principles to binding law, with the definition, lifecycle and presumption links between them.

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How the instruments relate AI governance instruments in rising order of force, from principles to binding law, with the definition, lifecycle and presumption links between them. Top to bottom, in rising order of force Principles and soft law OECD UNESCO G7 Hiroshima EU HLEG set the target and the shared vocabulary lifecycle Standards and frameworks NIST AI RMF ISO/IEC 42001 IEEE 7000 voluntary; ISO/IEC 42001 is certifiable Harmonised standards CEN-CENELEC JTC 21 presumption only once cited in the OJ Art. 40 CoE Convention CETS No. 225 binds its Parties not in force EU AI Act binding law recalls the HLEG in recital 27 definition: near-identical wording One control, many instruments build it once, tag it with each instrument As of 2026-09-24
How the instruments relate AI governance instruments in rising order of force, from principles and soft law through voluntary and harmonised standards to the treaty and the law, with the links the chapter traces between them, as of 2026-09-24. Build each control once and tag it with every instrument it serves, because standards support and do not confer. Drawn from chapter 22.

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In rough order of force, weakest first, as of 2026-09-24. Principles and soft law (the OECD AI Principles, the UNESCO Recommendation, the G7 Hiroshima Code of Conduct and the EU High-Level Expert Group guidelines) set the target and the shared vocabulary. Standards and frameworks (the NIST AI RMF, the ISO/IEC 42001 family and the IEEE 7000 series) are voluntary; ISO/IEC 42001 is certifiable, evidences a management system and confers no AI Act presumption of conformity. The NIST AI RMF adapts the OECD lifecycle and dimensions. Harmonised standards, written by CEN-CENELEC JTC 21 on a Commission request, give a presumption of conformity under Article 40 only once their reference is cited in the Official Journal; the chapter found none cited. The Council of Europe Framework Convention (CETS No. 225) binds the Parties that ratify it and is not in force; the EU AI Act is binding law and recalls the HLEG principles in recital 27. The OECD definition of an AI system, the Convention's Article 2 and the AI Act's Article 3(1) use near-identical wording. The engineering rule: build each control once, tag it with every instrument it serves and generate each instrument's view from the tags.

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*[How the instruments relate](https://aigovernanceengineer.com/figures/instrument-lineage) by Jorge García Aibar, aigovernanceengineer.com, v0.5.0, as of 2026-09-24. Licensed under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).*