Western-aligned politicians in Eastern Europe cannot let the far-right parties own the AI debate

Romania has been without a sitting government since May. Its economy is contracting, inflation is the highest in the European Union, hospitals are running out of medical supplies, and the schools are running out of teachers. In the middle of this severe political crisis, the only politicians talking about artificial intelligence are also the ones who want to take the country out of the West’s orbit. Călin Georgescu, the Russian-backed presidential candidate who won the 2024 elections that were later annulled by the Constitutional Court on the basis of foreign interference, called AI the “digital antichrist” and emphasized that the future of Romania’s economy lies in its agriculture, not in the digital sector. Claudiu Târziu, an MEP who is part of the ECR political group, publicly called for the EU-backed Black Sea AI gigafactory to be stopped, warning that it would lead the Danube river to dry up. But Romania is hardly an exception to this trend.

 

From Warsaw to Bratislava, the region’s far right is learning to turn AI scepticism into votes. At the same time, the pro-western parties are struggling to find their narrative. This is a strategic mistake. Eastern Europe has the lowest AI adoption in the European Union and the most to gain from catching up. It is also the strategic terrain where Russia and China can test their influence operations. If the mainstream politicians leave the AI debate to the far right, the region risks importing America’s backlash against AI before it sees any of AI’s benefits, and handing Moscow and Beijing a ready-made wedge to strengthen their own influence.

The anti-data centre movement started in the context of the US midterm elections scheduled for this November, and it has already led 14 state legislatures to consider data centre bans given energy considerations and local opposition. In New York, the Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul enacted the first executive order pausing new hyperscale data centre developments for one year. A similar measure was enacted in Texas, where the Republican governor halted all data centre permits pending a comprehensive infrastructure audit. This movement has arrived in the Central and Eastern European (CEE) region and is likely to grow, especially given the environmental and energy concerns. In Poland, a data centre planned to be built on the border of Piaseczno and Józefosław has sparked resident protests, as the facility’s water use is expected to equal a housing estate of up to 3000 people, and the town is already facing pressure on water. In Austria, hundreds of residents of a small town protested against a Google data centre project the size of about 70 football pitches. Local opposition puts pressure on CEE policy leaders to slow down such investments, especially ahead of key electoral moments.

 

However, local opposition is not the only factor that could block these investments in computing power. Strategic competitors – whether we are talking about Russia or China – will have every interest in amplifying internal divisions within society through influence operations carried out via social media. This playbook has already been tested by Beijing and amplified in the context of the US midterm elections, amplifying anti-AI sentiment in American society. This trend is evident in the OpenAI report released in June 2026, which detailed the “Data Center Bandwagon” and “Tech and Tariffs” influence campaigns. According to the report, Chinese operators used ChatGPT to create strategic narratives, memes and comments posted on X from fake accounts targeting the American public. One could expect similar operations to be replicated in Central and Eastern Europe, especially in the coming year. Parliamentary elections will take place in Estonia, Montenegro, Slovakia and Poland in 2027. All of these countries have been traditional targets for both Russian and Chinese disinformation.

So what is the solution to keep the Eastern European states competitive within the western-led tech ecosystem while addressing the environmental and human security concerns raised by local communities? Western-aligned political parties in the region cannot let the far right own the AI debate. In response to AI scepticism, moderate leaders should talk about AI opportunity. For example, in Estonia, OpenAI has a national programme for putting AI tutors in schools, which are built with local researchers and made available for over 7,000 students in Estonian. Through the BRAIN++ project, Bulgaria created large language model applications for the Bulgarian language, framing this endeavour as a step toward achieving technological sovereignty. In addition to the educational sector, artificial intelligence can benefit local communities in Eastern Europe to match, structure, and optimize proposals for major EU funding streams, such as Horizon Europe and the EIC accelerator.

 

But talking about opportunity while sweeping the problems under the rug is not enough. Communities need honest answers to their legitimate concerns. Even in the United States, leaders who are sceptical of data centre development are setting conditions rather than rejecting AI outright. Eastern European governments should adopt this logic before the internal divisions erupt, not after. That would imply transparency regarding the energy and water footprint of every large project before contracts are signed. It also means negotiating with technology companies in the open, with community benefit agreements, tech transfer commitments, and local hiring and training provisions. The EU already has a tool with the Commission’s new A-to-G sustainability label for data centres that rewards heat reuse and new clean power generation.

 

Regional cooperation is another tool in the toolkit for Eastern European policy elites. Poland and the Czech Republic are each contributing 100 million euros to a joint AI gigafactory bid, joined by Hungary and Lithuania. Eighteen EU states have signed on to gigafactory procurement, but Romania and Bulgaria are not among them. With bids due on November 12th, the window is slowly closing. Governments, however, are only half of the answer: they need to be populated with politicians that are tech savvy and able to speak with empathy to people that are seeing in AI the massive trend of job displacement. As the far-right politicians in the region seem to be ahead of the game (The Czech SPD’s AI-generated posters were modelled on Germany’s AfD messages), pro-western parties need to do the same and with a better story. Ahead of the 2029 European elections, politicians from the EPP, S&D, and Renew should build a narrative on AI that speaks to citizens’ concerns and does not dismiss them.

 

None of these measures will work if the debate itself is manipulated. Europe has already seen what that looks like: in 2025 alone, one in four foreign disinformation operations detected by the EU’s diplomatic service involved AI tools. Political parties cannot leave the monitoring of these threats only to intelligence agencies. They should also build in-house capacity to spot coordinating campaigns around AI and energy debates early on and debunk them before they spread. NATO’s StratCom Centre of Excellence in Riga is an obvious partner in this endeavour and it already trains communicators on AI. Leaders across the political spectrum and party strategists should also be in those classrooms.

 

When Romania eventually forms a government, it will inherit an economy in recession and a public that has lost all patience with the same old mainstream parties. Peter Magyar’s campaign in Hungary showed this spring that pro-western forces can still win elections as long as they speak to people’s everyday concerns. AI should be part of this conversation, as it touches every sector of the economy and society. If moderate leaders stay silent, the space will be filled by doomsday prophecies amplified by Moscow and Beijing. Eastern Europe spent three decades struggling to catch up with the West. It cannot afford to sit out from the technology that will define the next three, and pro-western parties cannot afford to let the far right tell voters it should.

Antonia-Laura Pup is a doctoral researcher at the European University Institute. She previously worked as a research assistant at the Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, from where she graduated as a Fulbright scholar. She served as a fellow at the House Select Committee on China in the US Congress and as a policy advisor to the President of the Defence Committee in the Romanian Parliament. In 2020, she was included on the Forbes 30 under 30 list Romania.