Brussels, 09/07/2014 (Agence Europe) - The Declaration of Venice was adopted at the end of the first day of the Digital Venice 2014 debate on Tuesday 8 July. The declaration will be used by the Italian Presidency to stimulate discussion at the EU Council of ministers on a single digital market. It calls for greater political determination and states that this is the only way of having a positive impact on the digital economy in Europe.
In practice, the Italian government is committed to “speeding up the digital transition in Europe” by helping the relaunch of investments in broadband infrastructure and proactively working towards the setting up of a single supervisory authority. Major mobile telecom operators in Europe represented by the GSMA (Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telecom Italia, Telefonica, Telenor and Vodafone) are delighted with the determination displayed by the Italian Presidency to make significant progress in the digital dossier and took the opportunity of this event to present Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and Commissioner for the Digital Agenda Neelie Kroes with their own declaration. They are calling for a new public policy in information and communication technologies as a means to: 1) promote the development of telecommunications infrastructure, the pillars of economic growth and citizens' well-being; 2) cultivate the roots of a “digital citizenship”, particularly through the comprehensive digitalisation of public administration; 3) promote job creation by focusing on qualifications in the digital sector; 4) meet the global internet challenges by ensuring a leading role for Europe in shared global internet governance. The GSMA emphasises that “identifying a robust path to growth is undoubtedly the most important current policy goal. To this end European firms need to vigorously compete in both the domestic and foreign markets and technological innovation is key”. The business world also supports the commitments proposed by the Declaration of Venice in favour of the single digital market that could help boost European GDP by more than €2000 billion by 2030. “EU decision-makers must incentivise increasing investment without hampering competition. The EU must find the right balance here”, stated Markus J. Beyrer, Director General of BUSINESSEUROPE. (IL)