Currently, the European Union (EU) is making considerable efforts toward the development of new policies for the ethical governance of autonomous agents. This contribution elaborates on the way ethics is implemented in EU robotics and AI governance and how this constitutes an important new development for robotics and HRI as fields of research. The main point in this regard is that the focus on (public) trust in robots and the increasing role of ethics is giving rise to a stronger relationship between policy-making efforts and robotics research. In order to develop this point, I first provide an overview of the EU's policy-making activities in the area of robotics in recent years. Based on this overview, I explore the ramifications of the focus on ethics while distinguishing different ideas and concepts that constitute the way in which those themes are defined in EU policy-making discourse.