At ASSIST Open Doors 2026, COMPLIANCE4DPP showed students at Stefan cel Mare University of Suceava how European regulation becomes executable code.
On 4 November 2026, ASSIST Open Doors brought “Deep Tech in Practice” to Stefan cel Mare University of Suceava (USV), Romania. The annual event aims to bridge the gap between what students study and what engineers actually build, giving them a clearer view of the roles, problems and skills behind real tech projects.
Among the booths on AI, robotics and software engineering, one was dedicated to COMPLIANCE4DPP. ASSIST Software is the project’s Romanian partner within the 19-organisation consortium spanning 9 European countries.
The challenge and the approach
Millions of products will soon need verifiable, machine-readable compliance information in the form of Digital Product Passports. At the same time, regulation such as ESPR and the Data Act is moving faster than manual processes can follow.
COMPLIANCE4DPP responds by turning compliance into an operational capability. It combines automated checks, policies-as-code, verifiable credentials and Gaia-X-aligned data spaces, so that compliance becomes an enabler rather than a tax.
From slides to conversations
A dedicated screen at the booth ran the project presentation, but the real exchange happened in person. Over the 5–6 hours of the event, ASSIST engineers held one-on-one discussions with students as groups visited the booth. Rather than pitching slides, they talked about how a European regulation becomes executable code, why trust has to scale across borders and partners, and what this means for the engineers who will build it.
Why it matters
- EU research as hands-on engineering. Students saw that EU-funded projects involve real architecture, real code and real decisions.
- Career relevance. They met the kind of problems they could work on after graduation, right in their own university.
- From policy to practice. Sovereign, interoperable digital infrastructure stopped being an abstract policy idea and became something concrete they could ask questions about.
The next generation of engineers will build Europe’s trusted data ecosystems. The sooner they see how that work looks from the inside, the better prepared they will be.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to the USV students and academic staff who stopped by, asked sharp questions and challenged our thinking. Special thanks to our colleagues at ASSIST Software, who organised the event and hosted the COMPLIANCE4DPP booth.