At their meeting on 4 December, European ministers responsible for telecommunications are expected to adopt a partial general approach on the Digital Europe programme for the period 2021-2027. The main changes, which were approved by the Permanent Representatives Committee on Wednesday 28 November, concern the governance of the programme.
As a reminder, the Digital Europe programme plans to strengthen Europe's capacities in key areas of digital technologies, namely supercomputing, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, advanced digital skills and access arrangements.
The draft text to be submitted to ministers on 4 December clarifies the governance of the programme: it specifies that the objectives related to supercomputing and cybersecurity must be managed indirectly, i.e. through the European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking, the European Cybersecurity Industrial, Technology and Research Competence Centre and the Network of National Coordination Centres for cybersecurity. The other objectives, namely artificial intelligence, digital skills and access arrangements, must be managed directly, via the procedure for implementing acts (committee procedure), the text states. To this end, it provides for the Commission to be assisted by a coordination committee for the Digital Europe programme (Article 27a).
Another change is that the Council's position clarifies the functioning of digital innovation hubs (Article 16), which are intended to be one-stop shops for access to proven and validated technologies and to promote open innovation. The Council text specifies that these European hubs, selected following proposals by Member States, should "stimulate the broad adoption of advanced digital technologies by industry, in particular SMEs and entities employing up to 3,000 employees that are not SMEs (midcaps), by public organisations and academia".
The text also clarifies the position of the new programme in relation to other existing programmes, such as the Connecting Europe Facility, Horizon 2020 and Creative Europe. It also stipulates that, for Specific Objective 3 (cybersecurity and trust), security reasons may require the exclusion of entities controlled from third countries from calls for proposals and tenders under this programme.
It should be noted that this is only a partial general approach, as it does not contain any figures, since budget negotiations are conducted in parallel.
Draft partial general approach of the Council: https://bit.ly/2KGSQxE. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)