CEE Digital Summit 2024

Last week we had the honour to attend our third ever Warsaw meeting of the CEE Digital Coalition, a meeting of IT associations and other digital stakeholders from the CEE region. It was a pleasure to see familiar faces that we regularly meet, both on this occasion and at events organized by DIGITALEUROPE.

At the very beginning of the Summit, representatives of the public sector from several CEE countries reflected on its position within the European Union and the global economy. Voices were raised about the need to harmonise EU digital legislation, which disproportionately burdens SMEs or start-ups.

The need to work on increasing digital competences to enable the fastest possible implementation of modern digital solutions was repeatedly emphasised. The panellists also agreed that the CEE countries need to coordinate the defence of their interests at EU level, as our economies face different challenges than those of some of the old Member States.

AI, cybersecurity and the cloud

Afterwards, the conference programme started with a series of thematic panels. The first one was dedicated to Moldova, whose representatives visited the CEE Digital Summit for the first time this year. This was followed by a panel on young people and women in the ICT sector. Statistics were presented, showing what problems and barriers women face when working in the ICT sector.

The second half of the summit was filled with panels on three key digital technologies and areas – artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and cloud.

AI is often referred to as a threat these days – whether in terms of dystopian scenarios about the threat to humanity, or more superficial concerns about the loss of many jobs as a result of its use. Speakers agreed that the overall culture of the AI debate needs to change, and that it is particularly important to teach the older generation, who have perhaps 10-15 years ahead of them in the labour market but are slower to adapt to technological change, how to work with it.

Cybersecurity has been a priority issue, especially since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but it was somewhat unfairly overlooked in the previous period. Poland and other countries in Central and Eastern Europe are experiencing the biggest onslaught of cyber attacks from Russian hackers, and it is not just attacks on consumers. Critical infrastructure and banking systems are also being attacked. This brings us back to the issue of digital competence – the public sector must have enough experts to combat these threats and citizens must be able to identify fraudulent behaviour early.

When it comes to cloud technologies, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe are lagging behind in terms of their use, especially by small and medium-sized companies. The main problem is that the Scandinavian countries, for example, started adopting them several years earlier and the CEE region has still not managed to catch up. Moreover, despite many traditional perceptions about the security risk of using cloud technologies, it turns out that they can protect better against cyber-attacks than traditional “offline” drives.

On the second day, we met informally with other members of the CEE Digital Coalition to summarize the summit. Among the activities initiated was a proposal to develop an analysis of the impact of the ICT sector in all countries of the CEE region using a common methodology or the creation of a platform for project cooperation.

We agreed with our colleagues from Digital Poland to send them our list of priorities for the Polish Presidency of the EU Council, especially regarding funding for digital innovation.

We will return to Warsaw soon, as the NTA meeting of DIGITALEUROPE will take place there in November. We look forward to working together.