Stop. Breathe. Think.

Moments of reflection often emerge when systems become too complex to simply accept.

Looking back at 2025, in the middle of a whirlwind of updates, news alerts, and ‘must-have’ innovations, a quiet question began to surface: how do we stop technology from controlling us not just as individuals, but as a society?

At the societal level, the warning signs are hard to ignore.

Across the Atlantic, we have been witnessing the rise of techno-authoritarianism with tech billionaires moving in synchronised formation, aligning with political power.

Companies like Google shape information flows, Palantir powers state surveillance, Meta influences civic discourse, and X amplifies unregulated political messaging.

Tools once built for connection now operate as proofs of concept for digital control enabling mass data extraction, behavioural tracking, and algorithmic manipulation.

Facial recognition monitors movement, personal data becomes a business and political asset, and in many places technology is shifting from a tool of empowerment to an instrument of control, narrowing space for dissent.

On a personal level, the dynamic is just as pervasive. Our devices nudge, interrupt, and steer our behaviour.

We scroll without thinking, react to notifications on command, and surrender attention to platforms engineered for addiction. The technology we once adopted with intentionality to enrich and simplify life, too often shapes our habits, our choices, and sometimes even our sense of self.

The challenge is no longer simply understanding how technology works - it is understanding how it works on us.

Which leads to the question Europe can no longer postpone: how do we reclaim agency, both collectively and individually, before these digital ‘tools’ begin shaping our future more than we shape them?

The future depends on what we build together

As an organisation working on EU citizens’ rights, the European Citizen Action Service (ECAS) sees this moment with clarity: Europe is standing at a crossroads.

It can drift toward the global trend of techno-authoritarianism, or it can choose a different direction — a European model of techno-democracy, where digital tools uphold democratic values, human dignity, and the rule of law.

For years, the EU has relied primarily on regulation through the GDPR, the Digital Services Act, the Digital Markets Act, and the AI Act to rein in Big Tech.

Companies like Google shape information flows, Palantir powers state surveillance, Meta influences civic discourse, and X amplifies unregulated political messaging

These efforts matter, but regulation alone does not allow Europe to shape its technological future. As the Draghi Report warns, Europe faces a deepening competitiveness crisis and needs a unified, future-oriented strategy.

Europe is managing risks when it should be shaping the digital future, building alternatives rather than only limiting excesses in a future that is being formed by others.

What we need is more ambition: European proofs of concept for a different technological future. If Europe wants to maintain democratic resilience in an era of rapid digitalisation, it must invest not only in regulating technology but also developing and upscaling techno-democracy prototypes that serve as counterweights to the techno-authoritarian ideas emerging globally.

We need to develop and use tools and initiatives that demonstrate how technology can strengthen democracy, rather than erode it.

We already have a clear sense of what European-designed digital tools must embody: strong privacy protections, meaningful user control over data, limited and transparent targeting practices, and a default orientation toward safeguarding individual rights.

These European alternatives can be both efficient and competitive, operating within a profit-making framework, provided that profit is generated within robust public-interest safeguards and not as part of business models that prioritise greed over ethics. Europe therefore has a distinctive role to play: to foster an environment where innovation is driven as much by societal values as by financial incentives.

If supported and scaled, such techno-democratic proofs of concept can serve as the blueprint for a European digital ecosystem grounded in rights, transparency, and accountability. Together they can form a model that is capable of countering the worrying trend of techno-authoritarianism now taking hold globally.

But achieving this vision requires something Europe has still not yet fully mastered: collective action.

Shaping is not possible if we continue to work in silos.

ECAS believes that Europe must build a coalition capable of reimagining and reinvigorating what techno-democracy can look like, to develop an action plan to achieve it in the upcoming years. A coordinated effort across public institutions, civil society, tech companies, multi-disciplinary experts and academics, and engaged citizens.

Only together can Europe build the technological foundations that will allow democracy to thrive in the digital age.

The future starts with what we do individually

Building a techno-democratic Europe cannot rely on institutions alone; it also depends on the everyday choices of individuals.

Digital ecosystems such as Google, Meta, Apple and others are deeply embedded in our routines, making it difficult to leave them.

We often rationalise this dependence, for example by claiming to have ‘nothing to hide’ and accepting the exchange of personal data as the unavoidable price of efficiency.

Yet these tools do not merely serve us; they shape us. They influence what information we see, how we consume, and how we spend our time. A techno-democracy cannot flourish if citizens feel powerless within the very systems that organise their digital lives.

Individual action means not perfection, but intentionality.

It begins with seeking information about European-made alternatives and then actively choosing for email and browsing services that prioritise privacy, for technologies that are designed for longevity and repairability, and social media and messaging apps that respect users’ rights.

Choose products that are actually tools in our lives, rather than companies that see us as tools in their business plans. Europe already offers techno-democratic proofs of concepts that embody this ethos, such as Proton, Qwant or Ecosia, Fairphone, Murena, Mastodon and others.

With regards to AI, we can make similar choices. We can opt for systems built with safeguards, oversight and clear purpose.

ERIC, ECAS’s rights-based AI assistant, is intentionally narrow, trained on curated sources about cross-border teleworking rights and continuously reviewed by human legal experts to ensure accuracy with evolving EU and national law.

Operated by a non-profit and free from monetisation, ERIC demonstrates what responsible, citizen-focused European AI can look like.

If Europe is to remain competitive while upholding its values, it must demonstrate through public policy, collective action and individual behaviour that technology can be innovative and profitable without sacrificing rights and dignity.

A techno-democracy will emerge only if enough of us choose it.

So Stop. Think. Act.