The trade war between the United States and China, and in particular the Trump administration’s crusade to prevent Huawei from gaining worldwide predominance in 5G technology, has rekindled geopolitical tensions between great powers. This dispute also opens up the debate as to what position should be adopted by other regions of the world, such as the European Union, to maintain their competitiveness and their leadership as an independent player. Former European Commissioner Günther H. Oettinger advocates “the fundamental role that politics needs to play, to ensure that decisions about market competitiveness aren’t left solely in the hands of corporations,” as he put it during his keynote speech in an event held today on Esade’s Madrid campus, in partnership with Google, entitled The Need for Smart Digital Policy: A View from Southern Europe. For Oettinger, the EU stands at a critical point: “it must push forward in its integration project by means of a clear digital strategy that enables us to act consistently and maintain our capacity for decision-making on the configuration of global issues; that guarantees our digital sovereignty and allows us to continue to be an open, market-oriented, competitive society.”

The former Commissioner highlighted three aspects that he considers to be crucial for the formulation of this policy: “the European Union should invest much more on R&D&I, on its universities, to consolidate areas in which we are on the cutting edge and give a boost to those in which we are falling behind; then it needs to ensure the digital literacy of its workforce, and that also means an education that incorporates new knowledge and skills from an early age; and lastly, it must step up its investment in technology infrastructures in order to maintain its relevance in the marketplace.” Regarding the European law on data protection and privacy, Oettinger recognised that having attained a European general data protection regulation is a great achievement, and should serve as a blueprint to advance in the regulation of other aspects related to cyber-security, research and investment in digital technologies.

A view from southern Europe

Stefano da Empoli, President of Istituto per la Competitività, remarked that “the Italian economy still has very little penetration of digital products and services, and this is due to the lack of digital skills of a large part of the population.” For him, “everybody ought to be able to work with digital and smart technologies, and to make that possible, a technology has to be user-friendly and affordable.” Da Empoli went on to stress the importance of having a financial ecosystem that is capable of assisting the entrepreneurial activity and development of European small and medium-sized enterprises in the digital sphere.

In turn, Aggelos Tsakanikas, Scientific Advisor at IOBE - Foundation for Economic & Industrial Research, observed that, owing to the financial crisis that has been hitting Greece for the last decade, progress towards digitalisation has been much slower than in other European countries. Nevertheless, he said that there are a large number of Greek researchers participating in world-leading technological research projects: “we need to be able to attract and retain that talent, because they can act as catalysts.”

For Vasco Teles, researcher on behalf of Fundação Francisco Manuel dos Santos, regulation should be formulated and implemented gradually and predictably, with set time frames than can offer investors a roadmap. “It’s necessary to narrow the gaps between politics, funding, R&D&I and market solutions; in this respect, policies should constitute a well-defined, agile, flexible instrument, capable of evolving at the same speed as the market, to apply digital technologies efficiently and productively,” he said. Likewise, for Teles, the main regulators of technology “should be values, not the other way around, so that the digital – which by nature is intangible – can become a concrete value for society as a whole.”

Núria Agell, Director of the Department of Operations, Innovation and Data Sciences of Esade, emphasised the need to move forward in the regulatory frameworks that govern the way data are shared, and to encourage the development of human-machine interaction. However, for her, the most important thing is a matter of trust: “it’s essential to improve transparency and explainability, this is, the understanding of how algorithms work, or why they operate in a particular way.”

Javier Solana, President of EsadeGeo, and Angel Saz-Carranza, Director of EsadeGeo, also gave speeches at the event.