On February 19th, the European Commission unveiled its ideas and actions for Europe’s digital transformation. Among the key priorities of European data strategy: putting people first, promoting the development of “trustworthy technology”, using digital solutions to fight climate change and achieve the green transition, and ensuring the human-centric development of artificial intelligence (AI).
The President of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said the new digital roadmap covers everything from cybersecurity to critical infrastructures, digital education to skills, and democracy to media. Commissioner for Internal Market, Thierry Breton, added: “Our society is generating a huge wave of industrial and public data, which will transform the way we produce, consume and live. I want European businesses and our many SMEs to access this data and create value for Europeans.”
Over the next five years, the Commission will focus on three key objectives in digital:
- Technology that works for people;
- A fair and competitive economy; and
- An open, democratic and sustainable society.
Regarding Artificial Intelligence (AI), the Commission published a White Paper, drawing a framework for trustworthy Artificial Intelligence, based on excellence and trust. In partnership with the private and the public sector, the aim is to mobilise resources along the entire value chain and to create the right incentives to accelerate deployment of AI. The EU will promote strict rules for consumer protection, to address unfair commercial practices and to protect personal data and privacy, with transparency, traceability and human oversight for high-risk AI systems. The White Paper is partly based on the work carried out by the High-Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence, which presented their Ethics Guidelines on trustworthy AI in April 2019.
Europe as a leader in the data economy
The amount of data generated by businesses and public bodies is constantly growing. The next wave of industrial data will deeply transform the way we produce, consume and live. The European data strategy published by the EU Commission aims at setting up a true European data space, a single market for data, to unlock unused data, allowing it to flow freely within the European Union and across sectors for the benefit of businesses, researchers and public administrations. Non-personal data will be made more widely available to enable citizens, businesses and organisations alike to make better and more informed decisions based on these insights.
The Commission will propose a new regulatory framework regarding data governance, access and reuse between businesses, between businesses and government, and within administrations. This entails creating incentives for data sharing, establishing practical, fair and clear rules on data access and use, and make public sector data more widely available by opening up high-value datasets across the EU and allowing their reuse to innovate on top.
Second, the Commission aims at supporting the development of the technological systems and the next generation of infrastructures, which will enable the EU to grasp the opportunities of the data economy. It will contribute to investments in European High Impact projects on European data spaces and trustworthy and energy efficient cloud infrastructures.
Finally, The Commission will also launch sectoral specific actions, to build European data spaces, and work to give citizens better control over who can access their machine-generated data.
Next Steps
In her Political Guidelines, Ursula von der Leyen stressed the need to lead the transition to a healthy planet and a new digital world. In that context, she announced to kick-start the debate on human and ethical Artificial Intelligence and the use of big data to create wealth for societies and businesses.
Later this year, the Commission will present a Digital Services Act and a European Democracy Action Plan, propose a review of the eIDAS regulation, and strengthen cybersecurity by developing a Joint Cyber Unit. Europe will also continue to build alliances with global partners, leveraging its regulatory power, capacity building, diplomacy and finance to promote the European digitalisation model.
Learn more: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_20_273