Brussels, 13/04/2015 (Agence Europe) - European Internal Market Commissioner Elzbieta Bienkowska used her speech at the Global Business & Markets Forum in Hanover on Monday 13 April to encourage firms to make more use of digital technology.
“We are not investing enough in new technologies”, she stated, comparing the EU with the United States, which she said was leading in this area. She gave four reasons why Europe is lagging behind: difficulties in accessing technologies and finance, technical barriers created by the varying national digital standards, the lack of digital skills and the fragmentation of regulation, which leads to legal uncertainty. Among the possible solutions, she highlighted the single digital strategy that the Commission is scheduled to unveil at the start of May. This will be based on four pillars, roughly corresponding to the above-mentioned four problems.
Within the Commission's economic agenda as a whole, Bienkowska promised to “focus on three priorities for industrial modernisation”: insertion of European companies in value chains, improving products and manufacturing processes, and improving the business environment.
She concluded her speech by flagging up “one further problem”, that of “mind-set”. She was critical of companies which, feeling under threat, seek to “limit” new technologies in the name of a “level playing field”. “That is not the solution either within Europe or with the outside world”, she argued. (Jean Comte)