Agentic AI: Opportunities and Challenges
How Can Europe Prepare for What Comes Next?

Artificial intelligence is moving beyond the chatbot, yet too few SMEs are equipped to turn these emerging capabilities into real business advantage. While agentic AI systems can increasingly use tools, complete complex tasks and act on behalf of users, many smaller businesses still face uncertainty around security, control, legal clarity and the practical conditions needed to adopt and invest in these technologies with confidence. This roundtable will explore how Europe can make agentic AI more accessible, trustworthy and useful for SMEs and start-ups. The discussion will examine how current developments in AI, together with the European regulatory environment, can support conditions in which smaller businesses are able to adopt and benefit from these technologies on the ground. The session will focus on four key directions:

• • what is new in agentic AI — how far it has developed and what comes next;
• • where the real opportunity lies for SMEs, through productivity, new business models and investment;
• • how companies should manage security and control when AI systems act on their behalf;
• • how European rules can create trust and legal certainty without unintentionally making adoption harder.

A central element of the session is the open roundtable exchange, designed to ensure that policy discussion is grounded in real business experience. SME representatives and practitioners will share concrete operational questions linked to adopting AI agents, managing risk, ensuring control and navigating the regulatory environment. The practical insights gathered through this exchange will feed into the policy debate, helping to identify approaches that are ambitious, proportionate and workable for SMEs and start-ups across Europe.