When AI-First Becomes Rights-Last: The Digital Omnibus and the Deregulatory Turn in EU Governance

Only one year after the official entry into force of the AI Act, the European Commission has already made a substantive proposal to meaningfully water it down as part of the so-called Digital Omnibus in November 2025. This article examines specifically the Digital Omnibus on AI, and asks: What is the underlying sociotechnical imaginary embedded in the EU’s Digital Omnibus on AI? 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 European digital governance. In doing so, it operates as an instrument of accelerated deregulation that reshapes the constitutional balance between rights protection, procedural integrity, and industrial competitiveness. In the specific case of AI, our analysis sows how the proposal to lower safeguards in the AI Act articulates and normalises the imaginary that the EU can only join the “AI race” if it lowers its democratic and fundamental rights standards. It therefore reproduces a neoliberal technological competitiveness imaginary. By positioning the Digital Omnibus on AI as a turning point towards conceiving deregulation as a necessary path for innovation and competitiveness, the paper engages directly with ongoing debates on transparency, legitimacy, rights protection, and EU democracy.