On Friday 30 June, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker gave his support to the Estonian Presidency of the EU Council – which is determined to include the digital agenda in all European sectoral policies.
“I know that our future is digital. It is in Estonia’s DNA and it needs to become the EU’s DNA”, Juncker told a press conference that he held jointly with Estonia’s Prime Minister Jüri Ratas (admitting also that he did not possess a smartphone).
As a country where internet access is recognised as a human right, Estonia has made digital one of the priorities of its EU presidency (which begins on Saturday 1 June). In Juncker’s opinion, the successful deployment of 5G technology would enable new activities to be created worth up to €146 billion per year, and would enable 2.4 million jobs to be created in the EU.
Fifth fundamental freedom
“I hope the free movement of data will be accepted as the fifth fundamental freedom” along with the freedoms of movement of people, goods, services and capital, Ratas stated. The Estonian Presidency considers digital as a horizontal, cross-cutting issue. It also considers that the other four freedoms are ever more linked to digital.
In Ratas’ view, a digital market would contribute up to €400 billion to the European economy and would create thousands of new jobs.
In September, the Commission is due to put forward a proposal on the free movement of data, European Commission Vice-President for the Digital Single Market Andrus Ansip told EUROPE.
No freedom without safety
However, Juncker also said that digital development must be done safely, when in 2016, he said, there were 4,000 cyberattacks per day – in other words, a 300% increase compared with in 2015. “The scale of the risks is significant: by 2020 there will be 50 billion connected devices”, he said.
The Commission will therefore present a new EU strategy on cybersecurity in September, with targeted actions and notably a renewed mandate for the European Union Agency for Network and Information Security (ENISA) (see EUROPE 11812). “We need to be much more seriously concerned about the question of cyber security”, Ansip told a small group of journalists. He added that it was also important to educate people to be much more careful on the internet.
Since November 2014, the Commission has put forward 35 legislative proposals in relation to the digital agenda. And the Estonia-Bulgaria-Austria Presidency trio has set itself the objective of reaching an agreement on all these files by the end of 2018.
The other priorities of the Estonian Presidency are security, innovation, economic openness and social inclusion in Europe. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)