Dragoș Tudorache
Former MEP, EU AI Act Co-Rapporteur
The Romanian MEP spent four years as co-rapporteur of the EU AI Act, drafting and negotiating the world’s first comprehensive AI regulation and arguing AI will force democracies to rethink their social contract.
In his words
The EU has delivered. We have linked the concept of artificial intelligence to the fundamental values that form the basis of our societies.
AI will push us to rethink the social contract at the heart of our democracies, our education models, labour markets, and the way we conduct warfare.
Biography
Dragoș Tudorache (born 1975) was a judge and later Romania’s interior minister before serving as a member of the European Parliament for the liberal Renew group from 2019 to 2024. Brussels handed him the largest legislative brief of the AI era: co-rapporteur of the Artificial Intelligence Act.
Four years drafting the AI Act
Tudorache first chaired the Parliament’s special committee on artificial intelligence (AIDA), then steered the AI Act itself alongside co-rapporteur Brando Benifei — through the ChatGPT shock that forced negotiators to bolt general-purpose model rules onto a framework designed for narrow systems, through lobbying from member states protecting their national champions, and through the 36-hour final trilogue of December 2023. When Parliament adopted the law on March 13, 2024, he called it a starting point for a new model of governance built around technology, insisting the risk-based rules would guide AI in a human-centric direction without smothering innovation.
Unlike many AI-law advocates, Tudorache consistently framed himself as pro-technology — his stated goal was to make Europeans trust AI enough to use it. He declined to seek re-election in 2024, and the Act’s staggered implementation, along with mounting pressure to simplify it, has since become the central fight he left behind.
Where they stand in the war
Who backs them up
Sources & further reading
Canonical record: https://battlelines.ai/topic/dragos-tudorache