Stakeholders from across Europe are backing the priorities of the Digital Europe Programme, in particular supporting advanced digital skills.
The European Commission (EC) has published a summary report of the public consultation on the strategic objectives of the Digital Europe Programme (DEP) for its first two years, showing strong support for the proposed priorities of future EU investment in Europe’s digital economy. The stakeholder input, provided online by citizens, business, public administrations and academia from across Europe, indicated support for developing advanced digital skills as well as investing in strategically important sectors such as cybersecurity and artificial intelligence. There was also support for digital innovation hubs to help SMEs and local administrations in their digital transition. The fifth proposed EC priority for future digital investments, supercomputing had slightly less support.
The consultation took place between July and October 2019 in the context of the EC planning for the DEP. The DEP is due to begin in 2021 with a proposed €9.2 billion budget for deploying and diffusing digital technologies with a focus on the above five areas: supercomputing, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, advanced digital skills and diffusion of these technologies across the economy and society. The goal of the consultation was to understand better stakeholders’ opinions and interests with regard to the proposed activities in these areas in order to inform the choices of how to implement the programme and for the preparation of the work programmes.
Of the 960 respondents, EU citizens were well represented as were business organisations, academia and public authorities. Most responses came from Germany, Italy, Spain and Belgium; non-EU country respondents represented over 6% of the total. In addition to surveying support for investing in the above technologies and skills, respondents were consulted on the most important applications for these technologies. There was strongest support for investing in applications for creating a clean planet, the digital transformation of learning and education and creating a more trustful and safer internet. There was less support voiced for the uptake of Blockchain.
In terms of the next steps, the EC will analyse the replies to the consultation further and incorporate input from other public meetings with representatives from EU regions, as well as the meetings of the informal expert group for the DEP. The final agreement of the European Parliament and the Council of the EU on the budget and association conditions for non-EU countries is expected in the course of 2020.