The European Commission (EC) has championed the use of digital technology to drive Europe’s future industrial economy.
Andrus Ansip, EC vice president in charge of the Digital Single Market, said in a speech exploring the EU’s prospects that all industries will need to embrace digital transformation if they are to remain a driving force in the European economy.
“In the future, all industrial sectors must make the best use of new technologies. Transport to telecoms equipment, factories to farming, high-tech to low-tech,” he said.
Read more: EC touts digital transformation as critical to region's industrial economy
New approach to debating key policy issues involving citizens
EU citizens’ experience is often not connected with the expertise of EU researchers. Tackling this challenge is what REIsearch, a European Commission co-funded project, aims to do via a series of citizen engagement initiatives centred on key themes on the European policy agenda. By stimulating a public debate between policymakers, scientists and citizens on the topic, this initiative aims to better understand the evidence, the constraints and the opinions of citizens across Europe.
Read more: EU: REIsearch: citizen engagement in policy decisions
Geo-blocking consumers’ online access to goods and services on the basis of their IP address, postal address or the country of issue of credit cards is unjustified and it must stop, says Parliament in a resolution voted on Tuesday. MEPs want Europe to seize the opportunities opened up by new technologies, such as Big Data, cloud computing, the Internet of Things or 3D-printing, and to have an innovation-friendly policy towards online platforms.
The 16 digital single market initiatives announced by the European Commission last May to boost the digital economy and innovation must be tabled without delay, MEPs insist.
"We have ensured that this report on the digitisation of the EU economy, society and public administrations determines legislative and non-legislative action to benefit consumers and to preserve Europe’s competitive social market economies”, said Internal Market Committee co-rapporteur Evelyne Gebhardt (S&D, DE).
This week, the European Parliament adopted in plenary its own-initiative report on “Towards a Digital Single Market Act.” The report represents the European Parliament’s political position on the Digital Single Market Strategy for Europe, published by the European Commission back in May 2015.
With this report, MEPs have flagged their issues of priority, which should help to steer the political agenda in the coming months. The reports covers quite a broad range of issues in the digital economy, from the role of platforms to digital content, but also issues such as e-government or digital skills. You may be thinking: “do not bite off more than you can chew”, but the report does have several good provisions.
The European Parliament has adopted a number of recommendations on the the EU's Digital Single Market strategy. The EP said in a statement that it plans to "co-legislate" with the European Commission on the DSM, which was first unveiled last year by the new EC. Most of the recommendations adopted by MEPs in a large majority (551 for, 88 against, 39 abstentions) are in line with the proposals already made the EC, such as putting an end to geo-blocking in order to increase access to digital services across EU countries and ensuring equivalent consumer protection for digital services whether purchased on- or offline.
Read more: EU Parliament makes recommendations on Digital Single Market