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To ensure that the EU meets its objectives for a digital transformation in line with EU values, the Council and the European Parliament yesterday reached a provisional agreement on the 2030 policy programme ‘Path to the Digital Decade’.

This decision aims to strengthen the EU’s digital leadership by promoting inclusive and sustainable digital policies that serve citizens and businesses. To this end, it sets out the concrete digital targets in the areas of skills, secure and sustainable digital infrastructures, digital transformation of businesses and digitalisation of public services which the Union aspires to achieve by the end of the decade. The policy programme introduces a novel form of governance based on cooperation between the member states and the Commission to ensure that the Union jointly achieves its ambition.

Ivan Bartoš, Czech Deputy Prime Minister for Digitalization and Minister of Regional Development yesterday said:

This programme will contribute to a modern, competitive, digitized, prosperous and educated society and to well-targeted digital transformation. It will speed up the development of EU’s industry, modernize the public sector and will make citizens lives easier. Digital skills and enhanced infrastructure are essential for the security and resilience of our society.

The provisional agreement clarifies several definitions of the programme’s general objectives with an emphasis on strengthening the fundamental rights, transparency and security, and on promoting digital skills. The Commission will develop EU-level trajectories for each of the EU’s digital targets together with the member states. The latter will draft national trajectories and strategic roadmaps to attain these targets until their expected review in 2026. Progress will be monitored on the basis of the Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI) and will be evaluated in the Commission’s annual report on the “State of the Digital Decade”. The concept of multi-country projects is also better clarified in the text. These are large-scale projects pooling EU, national, and private resources to achieve progress that no member state could do on its own. The policy programme will facilitate investments in areas like high-performance computing, common data infrastructure and services, blockchain, low-power processors, pan-European development of 5G corridors, high-tech partnership for digital skills, secure quantum infrastructure and network of cybersecurity centres, digital public administration, testing facilities and digital innovation hubs. The provisional agreement also provides for a cooperation mechanism between the member states and the Commission.

Next steps

Yesterday’s provisional agreement is now subject to approval by the Council and the European Parliament. On the Council’s side, the Czech presidency intends to submit the agreement to the Council’s permanent representatives’ committee (COREPER) for approval as soon as possible.

Background

The Commission communication ‘2030 Digital Compass: The European way for the Digital Decade’ of 9 March 2021 sets out a vision of the EU successfully achieving a digital transition by 2030. The EU’s ambition is to be digitally sovereign in an open and interconnected world, and to pursue digital policies that allow people and businesses to have a human centred, inclusive, sustainable, and prosperous digital future.

In its conclusions of 25 March 2021, the European Council stressed the importance of the digital transformation for the Union’s recovery, prosperity, security, and competitiveness and for the well-being of our societies. It identified the digital compass communication as a step towards mapping Europe’s digital development for the next decade. It called on the Commission to use all available instruments in the field of industrial, trade and competition policy. In light of these ambitions and challenges, the Commission proposed on 15 September 2021 a decision of the European Parliament and of the Council establishing the Digital Policy Programme ‘Path to the Digital Decade’.

• Path to the Digital Decade – Text of the provisional agreement (available at a later stage)
• Proposal for a Decision of the European Parliament and of the Council establishing the 2030 Policy Programme “Path to the Digital Decade”

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