Work in Parliament MEPs back “Path to the Digital decade” roadmap for 2030

The “Path to the Digital Decade” plan adopted on Tuesday will set EU-wide digital targets to be achieved by 2030, via a joint effort by Member States and the Union level, as well as through joint investment. It aims in particular to:

- ensuring that 80% of the population aged 16-74 has at least basic digital skills,
- deploy 10.000 climate neutral highly secure edge nodes,
- bring at least 75% of European enterprises to use cloud computing services, big data and Artificial Intelligence,
- ensuring that more than 90% of European SMEs should have reached at least a basic level of digital intensity.

The scheme also aims to secure that democratic life and public services are fully accessible online for everyone, and that all EU citizens have access to their medical e-records by 2030.

The legislation will support Multi-Country projects and provide for a legal structure and allow co-funding by several Member States, the Commission, the European Investment Bank as well as public and private investors.

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"The Digital Decade Policy Programme is a highly structured response to the challenges the EU faces in the race to the global digital leadership in the next 10 years and beyond” said lead MEP Martina Dlabajová (Renew, CZ).

“The ITRE Committee today supported the establishment of a new Governance system to make sure the Member States and the EU institutions work together to pool public and private investment for specific objectives in all four areas (Infrastructure, eGovernment, Business, Skills). As Rapporteur, I am very proud that the text reflects the solid involvement and attention for European SMEs and promotes better conditions for them to integrate innovative solutions into their day-to-day operations” she said.

“However, both large and small entities cannot thrive digitally if they cannot count on the most modern digital infrastructure. That is why Europe needs to rapidly implement all the available technologies to achieve a GigaBit infrastructure capacity”.

“The very blood of our digital economy is a capillary distribution of basic and advanced digital skills across the EU. We need to accelerate education and training solutions to fill a gap in the labour market, where the demand for advanced digital human capital, driven by the Covid-19 pandemic, will only increase" Ms. Dlabajová added.

Next steps

The report was adopted in the Industry, Research and Energy Committee with 74 votes to 1, with 1 abstention. MEPs also voted the mandate to enter into negotiations with Council with 74 votes to 0, and 2 abstentions. The mandate will have to be endorsed by the full House in a forthcoming plenary session before negotiations can start.

Background

On 15 September 2021 during the State of the Union speech, the European Commission's president Ursula Von der Leyen announced a robust governance framework to reach the digital targets in the form of a Path to the Digital Decade to achieve the digital transformation digital compass targets by 2030. A draft Decision proposed by the Commission establishes the Policy Programme ‘Path to the Digital Decade’ and sets out a monitoring and cooperation mechanism consisting of measures to:

set a clear direction for the digital transformation of the Union and for delivery of the digital targets;
structure and stimulate cooperation between the Union institutions and Member States;
ensure the consistency, comparability and completeness of the monitoring and reporting by the Union.