In recent years, the European Union (EU) has made considerable efforts toward the development of new policies for the governance of robotics and artificial intelligence (AI). As a part of those efforts, there has been a lot of emphasis on the need for ethical approaches, in order to safeguard responsible development and use and thereby build trust in robots. In this contribution, I claim that the current focus on ethics in robotic governance constitutes an important new development which has consequences for HRI as a field of research. Whereas the governance of robots has for a long time been focused on issues and topics that were beyond the interests of HRI research, I argue that the emphasis on the need for building trust and the increasing role of ethics establishes stronger links between current policy-making efforts and HRI research. In order to develop this point, I first provide a concise overview of the EU's policy-making activities in the area of robotics in recent years. After that, I interpret the impact and opportunities for HRI as a field of research.