How should you prepare regions for the digital age? This was the very question asked at the start of the 153rd plenary session of the European Committee of the Regions (CoR) on Wednesday 8 February.
“Regional and local communities have a key role to play” in the digital transition, said the Executive Vice-President of the European Commission, Margrethe Vestager. In particular, she encouraged Member States to consult them when developing their national roadmaps for the digital decade.
Both the Vice-President and the local elected representatives called for digitisation strategies to be in place at regional level. Based on his experience, Martijn van Gruijthuijsen (Renew Europe, Dutch) suggested, among other things, the introduction of “chief technological officers” in local administrations. This proposal was welcomed by Ms Vestager. “If we leave technology to drive [strategy and policy goals], it’s not democracy that sets the rules, but board rooms”, she emphasised.
At the same time, various MEPs, including Markku Markkula (EPP, Finnish), insisted on the need to attract private investment, which must go “hand in hand” with the public sector in order to innovate. “In Europe, we have been too shy to see the public sector as a driver of innovation”, Vestager agreed, arguing that a public digitisation strategy has the potential to generate “the private sector responses to the needs we have”.
Mr van Gruijthuijsen also called for regions to invest in “data labs”, since data “is not only about monitoring, but also about predicting value and impact” so that “we can improve our regional policies”.
Furthermore, local and regional elected representatives have raised concerns about cyber attacks. For Marco Marsilio (ECR, Italian), “ local and regional authorities need to enhance their digital resilience”, including through possible additional funding. “In the next year or so, new obligations will come into force with the revision of the NIS2 Directive”, replied the Vice-President.
Finally, the whole audience agreed that digital and green transitions must work together, for example on the development of applications that allow the energy consumption of electric cars to be managed. (Original version in French by Hélène Seynaeve)