The European Commission’s Executive Vice President for Digital Sovereignty, Security, and Democracy emphasized today that one of the priorities is to create a more unified market and advocated for investment incentives in light of delays in connectivity goals.
Henna Virkkunen spoke at the FT Connect Europe Forum, held in Brussels, which brings together various European operators, including Meo.
Overall, “when we look at our digital markets in the European Union and our competitiveness, I think we face some main challenges and, of course, with the ‘Digital Networks Act’, we are also focusing on these areas,” the official noted.
“One aspect that became very clear when we talk about our competitiveness and why we have this gap in terms of innovation is that we have, as you know, a very strong foundation to be competitive in Europe regarding technologies and different businesses because we have a great talent pool here,” she continued, pointing out that Europe excels in research and science.
“We have a very strong industrial base and also very promising startups, thousands of them, working with new technologies, but they lack a unified market, which is also a challenge for our telecommunications operators because we still do not have a single market regarding digital,” emphasized Henna Virkkunen.
Therefore, “one of our priorities will be to create more unified market,” she stressed, recalling reports by Enrico Letta and Maria Draghi that highlight this issue by analyzing different sectors in the European Union.
Finance, energy, and telecommunications were frequently mentioned as the main sectors where there is a need for “a broader single market.”
“And of course, we want to boost market competitiveness and also encourage innovation,” she added.
Like the cloud, 6G, and satellites, “we also need to take the development of new AI technologies into account,” said Henna Virkkunen, as well as investments.
“We need to encourage investments because we are still behind our connectivity goals,” pointed out the European Commission’s Executive Vice President, as good and smart modern connections “are the foundation of all innovations and all technologies in the European Union.”
Therefore, “also boosting investments, innovations, creating a broader unified market, and of course simplifying the rules, because simplification is a very important part of our competitiveness policy from a business perspective,” she stated.
“We want to ensure that we are cutting bureaucracy” in our industry, she added.
Henna Virkkunen also highlighted that cybersecurity is an important part of security, a topic she deemed significant.
