23/2025 L'Europe unie / United Europe : EU and its Neighbours amid AI Transformation and Multi-Level Geopolitical Pressures

23/2025 L'Europe unie / United Europe : EU and its Neighbours amid AI Transformation and Multi-Level Geopolitical Pressures. DOI 10.5281/zenodo.17969062 This volume of L'Europe Unie / United Europe (Paris) offers a comprehensive and interdisciplinary examination of the European Union's evolving policy landscape at the intersection of digital transformation, security challenges, and geopolitical instability. Structured around four thematic sections, the issue explores how the European Union responds to the accelerating impact of artificial intelligence, emerging technologies, and hybrid threats, while simultaneously addressing long-standing questions related to democratic resilience, legal frameworks, and neighbourhood policy. The first section analyses the implications of artificial intelligence and digital innovation for European governance, focusing on trust-building in digital environments, the regulation of deepfakes and disinformation, and the ethical and legal challenges associated with emerging technologies such as brain-computer interfaces and biohacking. These contributions highlight the tension between technological advancement and the protection of fundamental rights, emphasising the need for coherent EU-level regulatory responses. The second section addresses the transformation of EU digital governance, with particular attention to data protection, financial regulation, and the socio-economic implications of fintech development. By examining the application of GDPR principles and the role of financial education and inclusion, the authors demonstrate how European regulatory frameworks are being adapted to new economic realities shaped by digitalisation. The third section situates contemporary European challenges within a broader historical and geopolitical context, focusing on democratic vulnerability and the long-term patterns of Russian power projection. Through analyses of electoral interference, the legacy of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, and archival insights into Soviet and post-Soviet strategies, this section underscores the structural fragility of European security arrangements and the persistence of geopolitical contestation in Eastern Europe. The fourth section expands the analytical scope to the European Neighbourhood and Mediterranean regions, exploring the socio-political and economic dynamics of Tunisia in the context of migration, revolution, and entrepreneurship. These contributions emphasise the importance of regional partnerships and the need for nuanced policy approaches that account for local specificities and historical trajectories. The volume concludes with a set of strategic reflections on the European Union's capacity to navigate an increasingly complex international environment characterised by technological disruption, hybrid threats, and multi-level geopolitical pressures. Overall, the issue contributes to ongoing scholarly and policy debates on the future of European integration, highlighting the necessity of combining regulatory innovation, historical awareness, and geopolitical realism.