Billions in EU research cash are already flowing to Israeli firms linked to drones, AI targeting and surveillance, raising questions over whether Europe is effectively bankrolling technologies used against Palestinian civilians.
By treating digital attacks on Belarusian and Russian exiles as a systemic risk under the DSA, the EU could reshape how global platforms handle online transnational repression.
Campaigners have warned that stringent requirements to adapt games to children by default would prompt the extinction of small games and make costs spiral for developers.
As AI shifts work from people to machines, it will force a rethink of who gets taxed, on what, and where. Nowhere is that question more urgent than in Europe, which funds the world’s most comprehensive welfare states primarily through taxes on work.
If a woman enters politics, she may have to confront the fact that she may be one in 14 being digitally stripped by ‘nudifying’ technology. Such is what an EU ban is trying to stop: but whether it will be implemented in time, according to the Parliament’s greens party, is far from certain.
From biased hiring algorithms to disappearing administrative posts, Bieliková argues that women risk being hit hardest by AI unless they seize the tools early and push for fairer, more accountable systems.
As Big Tech companies dramatise rogue AI and China fears, the real fight is over who pays the price for today’s fraud, failures and job threats — and who pockets the productivity gains.
From phishing attacks on Polish soldiers to near-blackouts in winter, the EU’s fragmented cyber defence is seeing Russian online threats spill into real‑world dangers for ordinary Europeans.
Europe spent billions building a common cybersecurity defence. Yet a new audit has found that when a major cyber incident strikes, the EU’s response is not united.
The consumer-rights group which filed complaints against the tech giant lashed out at the “disproportionate” time taken for the Irish privacy watchdog to protect sensitive location data.
The EU Kids Act promises to wean children off endless scrolling and late‑night gaming, but privacy advocates and parts of the tech industry warn the EU’s own age‑verification system could open the door to new risks.
A revolution in tech, or another Brussels-bred measure that will fall flat on enforcement? Such has been the debate surrounding the EU’s new social media ban for teens, though it is still pending review by law-making bodies.
Ursula von der Leyen talks about European sovereignty and keeping Europe’s fate in European hands, but the model she presented for achieving that sovereignty relies heavily on non-European technology and global capital.
![[Interview] Could musicians and dancers in Europe revolt against AI using their work? ‘It should be possible’, says performing arts boss](https://static.euobserver.com/2026/09/Orchestra-Photo-14719432-2400x1600.jpg)
Performers of works authored by others are in a particularly precarious position when it comes to AI training on their work. How can the EU protect them?
This year’s State of the Union address was expected to contain social media restrictions to greater safeguard children in light of sustained harm, and sometimes, deaths. Recently, however, Ursula von der Leyen’s tune seems to have changed.
The former Italian prime minister tells EUobserver that Europe’s scale-ups in health and elsewhere are too small to survive the ‘China 2.0 shock’, and that without a finished single market Europe will keep losing out.
The EU’s digital privacy framework claims to have enough legal firepower to keep Meta’s smart glasses under control, or so they say. The glasses have been banned by many pubs and cinemas in UK and even ICE agents in the US but Brussels says ‘existing rules are applicable, regardless of technology used’.
Meta has agreed to major changes to Facebook and Instagram following a multimillion-dollar US settlement, including two-hour daily limits and nighttime restrictions for under-18s. The EU is pursuing a similar case under the Digital Services Act, but could go further by tackling addictive design and algorithms promoting harmful content.
Credit ratings of AI tech giants may be based on “assumptions on future revenue growth and leverage which may not stand the test of time”, creating a risk of “mispricing of credit risk,” the ECB’s financial experts found.
Europe wants to mobilise €30bn for data centres to compete in the global AI race. But across the continent, local communities are pushing back over environmental concerns. Can Europe build technological sovereignty while keeping Big Tech’s power in check?
