Due to its profound social, economic and political implications, the digital transition is one of the main challenges of the 21st century. For this reason, the European Commission listed it among its political priorities, translating them into concrete legislative and policy initiatives in areas such as connectivity, artificial intelligence, data, cybersecurity and digital platforms. Since Europe’s decisions have a direct impact on its citizens and businesses, and digital policies are high on the current political agenda, several questions are worth making: what is the EU’s actual role in the digital transition? What are the main challenges the EU is facing in this field? How could we assess the initiatives presented so far? What are the geopolitical implications of Europe’s actions?

To discuss some of them, on November 16 the Centre for Contemporary Studies and the Delegation of the Government of Catalonia to the EU organized a virtual session with digital experts coming from some of the leading research institutions in Europe. The participants of this event, moderated by the journalist Jack Parrock, were Lewin Schmitt, Pre-doctoral Researcher at the Barcelona Institute of International Studies (IBEI); Andrea G. Rodríguez, Researcher at the Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB); Andreas Aktoudianakis, EU Digital Policy Analyst at the European Policy Centre (EPC) and Martina Anzini, EU Digital Market Expert at European Institute of Public Administration (EIPA). In their following interventions, they not only touched upon the public policies needed to enable the digital transformation of our continent, but also the regulation of those aspects that are more sensitive to European citizens and businesses.

The session started with an institutional keynote by the Catalan Government’s Director General of Digital Nation and Urban Agenda, Maria Galindo, who explained the digital priorities and actions implemented in Catalonia, which she referred to as “the land of digital revolutionaries”. As explained by the Director General, the Catalan priorities in the digital domain are, first, the digitalisation of the government and administration, such as education and health, which accelerated due to the pandemic. Second, the empowerment of citizens, which includes the safeguard of digital rights and the promotion of the Catalan language and culture on-line. Third, the deployment of digital infrastructures to ensure connectivity, rebalance the territory, create jobs and attract international talent. Fourth, the development of the digital economy by creating talent and promoting innovation. Fifth, the provision of cybersecurity to citizens, businesses and public bodies to ensure trust in the digital transition. In her intervention, she also stressed the need to use digital technologies to address other key priorities such as climate change.

Current state of the European technological ecosystem

After this introduction, the first part of the debate started with the opening remarks by the invited experts. The first one to intervene was Lewin Schmitt, who spoke about the current state of the European technological ecosystem. A part from referring to Barcelona as one of the best-positioned cities in this domain, he expressed satisfaction with the good job done in Europe in terms of start-ups and venture capital. However, he pointed out that 90% of venture capital goes to start-ups with only men in the teams, exposing the prevailing gender gap in this field. On Artificial Intelligence, he recognized the role of the European Commission, who recently tabled the Artificial Intelligence Act, the first legislative proposal worldwide to regulate this technology. Despite the relevance of the initiative, he warned that military applications, such as killer robots are outside of the scope of the text and, since the negotiation is still ongoing; he later expressed concerns as to whether the result will be ideal. “Probably, there will be some sort of trade-offs and compromises that may not represent the ideal scenario, but just a sort of a mix of interests” he noted.

In her initial remarks, Andrea G. Rodríguez, from CIDOB, talked about other European legislative initiatives such as the Digital Services Act (DSA), the Digital Markets Act (DMA), the NIS Directive and explained how they complement each other. According to Andrea, through these measures, the EU is trying to open-up algorithms, tackle the spread of disinformation, govern platforms and make technology trustworthy. These efforts, she added, are based on the European Single Market which, despite “being a common market, is not a political union yet”. Therefore, she concluded, most policies to promote the digital transition at the EU level will aim at boosting the competitiveness of the European economy.

The EPC analyst, Andreas Aktoudianakis, stressed that, due to the complexity and broadness of the topic, it is helpful to frame the debate of Europe’s digital challenges through the concept of Europe’s Strategic Autonomy. According to him, we are in a race in which we do not want to be the third player vis-à-vis China and the United States, a trend that started with Brexit and Trump’s election, when Europe realized that the perceived “cooperation” had become some sort of “dependence”. As an example, Andreas highlighted that 92% of European Data is stored outside of the EU. For him, what is key is how to bring the above-mentioned regulative proposals in line with the bigger plans, exploring how they can be exported and mirrored elsewhere, like the US.

Martina Anzini, from EIPA, raised the issue of Internet of Things (IoT), which she referred to as a “game changer”. For her, the fact of having an increasing number of objects connected to each other and the internet, in a kind of smart environment, is extremely relevant because firms themselves will produce and store the resulting data (and not the digital platforms). However, she noted that several challenges could limit its impact. First, data is under the firm control of the companies that produce it and, due to the absence of a clear regulatory regime, most of them are hesitant to share it because they are afraid of losing control over it. In this respect, she referred to the importance of the European Data Act as an instrument to tackle this challenge. Second, she noted that data needs to be stored somewhere and, currently, a few foreign companies dominate the cloud sector.

Digital challenges

The second part of the debate addressed other issues shaping Europe’s digital transformation: the conflict between regulation and innovation; the state of personal data and privacy; the barriers in the single market; the role of local and regional authorities in the digital transition and current events (such as the shortage of semiconductors and the recently announced Metaverse by Facebook). Despite the diversity of topics discussed, the references to the “geopolitics of digital technologies” and the “European digital sovereignty” were a common feature of all the interventions.

In this context, Lewin Schmitt described the European “awakening” regarding the degree of digital dependence and clarified that such dependence is bidirectional, in the sense that the EU also has technologies in which it is a world leader (such as in the production of microchip equipment). Andreas Aktoudianakis expressed some doubts regarding the possibility of achieving independence from the US and China, since the EU cannot achieve the digital transformation on its own. Furthermore, he emphasised the need not to think in terms of “dependence” per se, but rather of “cooperation” again. As an example, he referred to the collaborative processes with China in green objectives and the US in the creation of technological standards compatible with democratic values. Martina Anzini considered that the IoT might allow that smart objects produce and collect the data, outside of the monopolistic platforms and foreign state control.

Andrea G. Rodríguez raised the issue of “open strategic autonomy” which means focusing on those areas where the EU can develop autonomously and collaborating with other actors in those where it cannot. She also called for the relocation of some processes (or parts of them) that are critical within European supply chains in order to ensure a “security of supply””. For Martina Anzini, it was difficult to talk about sovereignty and keep the market open, adding that its member states are also subject to the World Trade Organisation regime an cannot exclude third players that easily.

Despite the magnitude of the challenges described throughout the session and the different views on the EU’s capacity to address them, there was a clear consensus among the experts that current initiatives such as the DSA, DMA and AI Act were key tools to build this digital sovereignty and put the EU on track for the digital transition.