Cuprins:
Every year, in mid-September, the President of the European Commission delivers a speech to the plenary of the European Parliament in Strasbourg. Entitled “The State of the European Union”, the speech carries a double value: on the one hand, an occasion to reflect on the challenges and opportunities the European Union has faced over the past year and, on the other, a moment of projection, of strategic ideation for the future of the European project. This year the speech carried all the more weight, as the European Union is navigating troubled waters as it never has before.
In what follows we examine the announced directions that concern the digital space. We do so because this speech addresses not only Brussels, but Romania as well. We do so because Romania is an important pillar in building the future of the European project, in the digital space and beyond it, and because these debates concern us directly too, in Bucharest or in any other corner of the country.
I. Economic competitiveness (also) through cutting red tape
In today's economy, speed is of the essence. A permit or a form, a grid connection or a financing decision. All of this can determine where an investment is made. Where jobs are created. We need to move much faster. This is why we will put forward proposals to further speed up permitting.
The EU is continuing its efforts to persuade companies to stay and grow within its borders. Beyond access to finance, the simplification of administrative procedures sits at the epicentre of the European vision, including through the proposed 28th regime for companies, EU inc, which rests on low set-up costs (100 euro), speed (incorporation within 48 hours) and fully digital workflows. Today’s call to the member states was particularly clear: simplification must come from the member states too, which have for years practised what is known as “gold-plating”, that is, over-regulation at national level using European legislation as its basis.
For Romania, the courses of action we have reiterated over time remain relevant, built around the need for a legislative and procedural audit to address bureaucracy. In our times simplification cannot be decoupled from the idea of digitalisation, and digitalisation in turn needs a rethinking of workflows and a reduction of red tape in order to be effective. From setting up a company online within 24 hours, with a simplification of the existing steps, to integrated digital workflows for running a business, Romania has to take seriously its role in the future European pact against over-regulation, to fit coherently into the new picture in which digitalisation has long ceased to be an end in itself and has become a means, and to stop playing the “Brussels is making us do it” card in order to justify pointless and absurd requirements.
II. Artificial intelligence: Towards an era of new technologies “with a human face”?
Our approach is clear. We want AI. We want AI to create more value, more responsibly. And at a lower cost and with less energy consumption. But above all, we want AI with human agency.
Artificial intelligence received particular attention in President von der Leyen’s speech. Having announced the AI Continent Action Plan last year, the head of the Commission set out this year several courses of action through which the European Union can make such a vision possible. Balancing the major risks against the solid opportunities that AI generates, Ursula von der Leyen offered multiple examples of issues, fields and initiatives in which the EU intends either a more ambitious role or firmer action.
She invoked, for instance, the Artificial Intelligence Act, saying of it that it has the merit of having placed the European Union in a major global position in defining the rules of the game. She also mentioned the need for strategic partnerships with allies such as Canada and the United Kingdom to this end, in order to develop joint protection mechanisms. She referred to the debate opened by global industry leaders about the need for more regulation of AI, announcing that the European Union will likewise open consultations with its own large AI laboratories. Finally, she set out the EU’s strategic vision on the subject: “an artificial intelligence subordinate to human decision-making”.
The challenge facing the Union is nevertheless a major one, perhaps greater than the way it was outlined. It is described by “A Transformative AI Strategy for Europe”, the strategic reflection project launched this Monday by key figures of the European marketplace of ideas and beyond. The Union, for instance, hosts only three times more computing capacity for AI than a state such as Malaysia, while European developers of AI models earn each year, taken together, just 2% of the revenue of only two American counterparts. It is therefore to be welcomed that the President of the European Commission announced that she will push computing capacity forward and step up efforts on matters such as gigafactories and technological sovereignty for the EU. Equally important is that the EU has undertaken to regulate and to confront collectively those AI agents that “escape” their environment, the Hugging Face incident being illustrative.
We have worldclass industries that sit on the highest-quality data. These data are a precious European treasure. They are what can power tailor-made industrial AI models.
The EU does of course have aces up its sleeve, and data is a genuine strategic asset. The President of the Commission underlined as much, and here more action from the European institutions is essential. At the same time, AI and data form a double-edged partnership: they can help humanity address essential problems, yet, once out of control, they can sharpen the dangers. The example given by the President of the Commission is important: screening and mammograms for cancer prevention already save many lives each year, and AI can amplify those efforts. As the President put it, however:
The point is that AI needs to empower our doctors. Not replace them.
The same holds for other sectors of activity: AI can become a major enabler rather than a substitute. It is welcome, therefore, that the Commission will launch programmes through which AI helps sectors such as technology-driven agriculture, defence and space to advance rapidly but in a controlled manner. Equally welcome is that the forthcoming “Quality Jobs Act” will be paired with a component covering AI support for skills development and for the labour market, so as to offer citizens meaningful guarantees.
III. Security, democracy and strategic vision: A “Digital Shield” for the European project?
On climate change, this summer was the summer of truth.”
Speaking about global warming, the President of the Commission stressed that for Europe this summer was a moment of truth. That assessment is certainly pertinent. In terms of the European Union’s digital resilience and technological sovereignty as well, however, the season of the past few months has been a genuine moment of truth.
Just as climate resilience will benefit from a whole-of-society approach, the digital resilience of the European Union deserves a project of similar scope. The European Centre for Democratic Resilience, launched this year over the winter and announced in the President’s September 2025 speech, is a commendable initiative. It is tasked with managing the “European Democracy Shield”, an undertaking meant, among many other tasks, to support the member states in countering foreign interference and information manipulation (FIMI).
This shield, however, would deserve to be paired with another one, a “Digital Shield of the European Union”. Countries such as Romania, on the front line of what the President of the Commission described as “cognitive warfare” in the virtual space, need additional European governance mechanisms allowing for more complex interventions and, above all, for more action where it is currently missing: in strategic communication and in defence within the battle of narratives.
One notable initiative in this respect is the European Union’s Anti-Hybrid Playbook, an equivalent of Article 4 of the NATO Treaty, which provides for rapid intervention by the member states in support of one or more countries of the bloc when a security emergency requires it. Beyond the hybrid threat, however, the societal threat runs deeper, and here the European Union has yet to articulate its compass. The announcement that the European Union will develop a Security Council of its own is therefore a good sign, alongside the long-awaited announcement of a European Security Strategy. Another essential step is the multitude of measures announced on the horizon of the European Union’s security and strategic leadership.
The major announcement of this speech was, of course, the launch of the process for Canada’s accession to the European Union as its first “associate state”. In the same context, von der Leyen also announced a “Common Prosperity and Economic Security Space” between the EU, Canada and, possibly, other allies, an area that will extend shared vision and action to fields such as artificial intelligence, quantum technologies and cyberspace. Equally important is the European Instrument for Strategic Enablers, which will focus in particular on strengthening European defences against cyberattacks. It should, however, be well defined, so that it does not follow the pattern of earlier initiatives such as the cyber sanctions framework (the “EU Cyber Diplomacy Toolbox”), a framework which, from 2019 to the present, has been invoked in relation to only 11 legal entities and 27 natural persons.
IV. Child safety and digital inclusion: The T0 moment for the European social model?
No social media under the age of 13. No personal account under the age of 15. That means, from 13 until a child turns 15, only mini accounts set up and supervised by parents or guardians, with limited features and time restriction of one hour a day. And between 15 and 18, safe design will be an obligation for the platforms.
The President of the Commission announced a new proposal for a regulation, the EU Kids Act, which will be presented tomorrow. The proposal comes in the context of steps already taken by several member states to ban social media for children, with each country setting a different age threshold, different requirements and different verification methods, which would have resulted in the fragmentation of the internal market. The regulation is welcome from the perspective of a coherent European approach, but it remains to be seen whether it will have the desired effect and how age verification will work in practice.
The approach gains all the more coherence in that the new regulation, if adopted, will be preceded by the entry into force of the eIDAS 2 provisions requiring the large platforms to accept European digital identity wallets for authentication and identification.
For Romania, the priority must therefore remain the development of the national version of the European digital identity wallet, the only secure age verification mechanism that would not involve sharing (even more) sensitive personal data with the large platforms.
In the same vein came the announcement of the forthcoming Digital Fairness Act, which aims to protect consumers online and addresses elements of manipulative design, addictive design, abusive personalisation, deceptive marketing and subscriptions that are hard to cancel, reinforcing the idea that it is not only children who need protection online, but adults too.
Conclusions: Romania in a “digital” Europe. Witness or actor?
In the European debate, digital transformation is already taken as read. Precisely for that reason, heightened attention went to new technologies and to artificial intelligence in particular. Yet, to paraphrase a frequently cited idea, the European Union is only as strong as its slowest states. Romania, a country of digital paradox, is a good example. In a country where connectivity is world-class and citizens use the internet in line with the European average, we remain in last place on key chapters such as digital skills or electronic public services.
And, all the while, Romania is also on the front line of phenomena such as hybrid interference and the digital polarisation of the information space. If the entire Union is exposed to the risks associated with AI and new technologies, Romania encounters them all the more. And what we have to state honestly in this context is that we are still not present in these European debates concerning digital transformation, new technologies, artificial intelligence and the Union’s competitiveness in this era.
Next year, as President von der Leyen announced, a Congress of Europe will be convened to mark 70 years since the ratification of the Treaty of Rome, a founding moment for the European project. There, the future of the Union will take on a new shape. For Romania, that will be a good context in which to assert its vision for the trajectory of the European project, including (and perhaps above all) in matters of digital transformation and new technologies.
Being present in these debates, having a voice at European level on such themes, is not a luxury. It is a strategic imperative. By shaping a firm, even innovative position on essential issues relating to the digital sphere and new technologies, Romania would record a double gain: on the one hand, it would manage to resolve some of the challenges it faces at home; on the other, it would establish itself as a voice, an entrepreneur, perhaps even a regional leader in this equation.