The Member States of the European Union will discuss the first version of the French Presidency of the Council of the EU’s (FPEU) compromise text on the 2030 Agenda for the ‘Path to the Digital Decade’ in a meeting of the Telecommunications Working Group on Thursday 27 January.
The European Commission presented its proposal on 15 September to ensure that the EU meets its digital transformation objectives (see EUROPE 12843/11).
A number of changes were made to the Commission’s proposal by the FPEU, including changes to the scope of the text, which now specifies that collaboration should also take place between individual member countries directly and not only between them and the European Commission.
The new version of the text also aims to reduce the administrative burden as much as possible. In this respect, the text removes, for example, the obligation for a Member State to send the Commission written reasons why it considers that the roadmap set out does not need to be updated after the publication of the ‘Report on the state of the Digital Decade’.
According to the Commission’s proposal, Member States could have a period of five to eight months from the publication of the report to submit to the Commission the necessary adjustments to achieve the targets set by the national roadmap.
However, the FPEU states that this issue will have to be discussed by Member States, as will the timeframe for providing “statistics and data necessary for the effective monitoring of the digital transition” and for adapting their national strategic roadmaps, for which a timeframe of three to five months is foreseen.
Overall, the FPEU is rather in favour of less frequent interaction with the Commission and longer timeframes for Member States.
In addition, the FPEU compromise text also calls for greater flexibility for Member States in defining roadmaps, “taking into account differences between countries and in levels of ambition”.
Finally, the FPEU believes that the issue of the ‘committee’ assisting the Commission in the ‘Path to the Digital Decade’ should be further addressed, in order to better identify its composition and tasks.
See the FPEU compromise text (in French): https://bit.ly/3rU58sA (Original version in French by Thomas Mangin)