DIGITALEUROPE Presidency Summit Brussels

In the previous two days we were invited to the DIGITALEUROPE Presidency Summit held in Brussels, which has long been the heart of the European policy.

DIGITALEUROPE took advantage of this strategic meeting to promote its new manifesto, which you can find here. Its main goal is to make the EU a digital superpower and reverse its lag behind the US and China. Along with DIGITALEUROPE CEO Cecilia Bonefeld-Dahl, several MEPs from the four political fractions were present at the official opening ceremony to discuss our digital future.

In addition to the main leitmotif of the manifesto, digital skills were also addressed. DIGITALEUROPE’s goal is that by 2030, more than half of the EU population will have digital competences that go beyond the basic level. To achieve this goal, it is of course necessary not only to ensure quality education in primary and secondary schools, but also to focus on strengthening the digital competences of our older citizens, which is an even greater challenge.

As has become a tradition of recent NTA Summits, the forthcoming European digital legislation came up again. This time, most attention was paid to the negotiation of the AI Act. Representatives of the European digital business, as well as AAVIT cluster memebrs, are extremely concerned about the restrictions that its proposed design places on the development and implementation of AI. We believe that it will still be possible to liberalise the legislative proposal sufficiently, as we consider it absolutely unreasonable to bind the most progressive industry of our time with bureaucratic regulations.

Last but not least, we had the opportunity to visit the research facility of Imec, one of the leaders in the field of nanoelectronics and digital technologies, and to meet personally all the relevant actors who will be responsible for digital issues during the Belgian Presidency in spring 2024. These network and knowledge are crucial for our cluster activities and improving services to AAVIT cluster members within the cluster project.