When AI-First Becomes Democracy-Last: The European Commission’s Digital Omnibus and Its Technosolutionism on Steroids

Abstract

In November 2025, the European Commission made a substantive proposal to meaningfully water down existing EU digital legislation in relation to Artificial Intelligence (AI) as part of the Digital Omnibus package. This article specifically examines the Digital Omnibus package in relation to AI, and asks: What is the underlying socio-technical imaginary on AI embedded in the European Commission’s Digital Omnibus initial proposal? Situated within the broader proliferation of omnibus legislation in the EU, we argue that the Digital Omnibus is not merely a neutral legislative technique aimed at simplification, but a device for producing institutional imaginaries that reconfigure the normative foundations of EU digital governance. Hence, the Digital Omnibus package contributes to rearticulate what counts as a desirable European future and which democratic or rights-based costs become acceptable in its name. Our analysis exemplifies how the post-regulatory state operates not by formally dismantling the EU’s regulatory architecture, but by reconfiguring it from within. The Commission’s socio-technical imaginary normalises the data extractivist model according to which the EU can only join the “AI race” if it lowers its democratic and fundamental rights standards. It therefore operates as an instrument of accelerated technosolutionism that reshapes the constitutional balance between democracy, protection of rights, procedural integrity and industrial competitiveness.