Brussels, 03/12/2014 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday 2 December in Brussels, the Commissioner for the Digital Economy, Günther Oettinger, met the minister-president of the German state of Baden-Württemberg, Winfried Kretschmann, in an effort to discuss the development of the “4.0” industry in this high potential region.
The Commissioner pointed out that that all the different services for citizens and industry in Europe will be based on digital technology (which is already the case in many instances). The Commissioner said that in addition to the economic situation of this specific German region, all the different European regions needed to invest in digital infrastructure to connect up all European citizens. Commissioner Oettinger emphasised, “we cannot wait. Broadband is one of the key areas of the Investment Offensive presented last week by President Juncker”.
Minister-President Kretschmann highlighted the importance of establishing an efficient data protection framework and mentioned the challenge of developing specialised skilled labour in the digital technologies. He also said national interests should be put aside in order to develop a genuine European leadership in this connection.
In reply to a question about funding to the digital sector through the investment plan of €315 billion presented by Jean-Claude Juncker, the Commissioner explained that he hoped to obtain “several billion” to implement the digital infrastructure necessary but also said that they needed to wait for comprehensive figures on the subject that would be available by February or March 2015. Questioned about the non-binding resolution from the European Parliament voted for last week in favour of unbundling Google activities (a resolution that has put pressure on the European Commission to take action in this sense), Oettinger was not willing to make any other exact comments at this stage other than saying, “let me be quite defensive” on this question. The Google case has not yet been closed and there is an ongoing procedure at the Commission, which is currently examining the different comments sent to it from the stakeholders. The Commissioner stressed that they wanted a decision that would be, “fair and consequent, based on a clear legal basis” and added that this decision would not be about, “politics or populist”.
Last week, the German government sent a letter to the European Commission calling on it to take firm action on the question of search engines, particularly Google search, whose dominant position is crushing competition from other European operators. (IL)