Since January, the French Presidency has made extensive progress on legislative work undertaken by the Council. In particular, the agreement reached on both the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and the Digital Services Act (DSA) is a global first, creating a safer and more secure digital environment for citizens, while establishing fair competitive practices for businesses. What is more, the Network and Information Security (NIS2) Directive represents a prime opportunity to strengthen the EU’s cybersecurity capabilities. After the French Presidency’s earlier policy focus on asserting Europe’s digital sovereignty and showing solidarity with Ukraine, the Digital Assembly will turn the spotlight on Europe’s digital future. The event will bring together thousands of participants in Toulouse and online, including a number of high-profile speakers from the economic, academic and political spheres.
This year’s Digital Assembly comes at a pivotal moment, with Europe achieving major strides in regulating the digital sector, though it will continue to face significant challenges in the coming years, such as balancing the green and digital transition, ensuring technological sovereignty and addressing the emergence of new technologies that could remake the internet.
The war in Ukraine has, moreover, raised major telecommunications issues, a matter covered by EU Ministers in charge of digital affairs at the informal meeting of the Council of the EU Working Party on Telecommunications, held in Nevers on 8 and 9 March 2022. Mykhailo Fedorov, Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine, will address the meeting virtually. The French Minister for the Economy, Finance and Industrial and Digital Sovereignty, Bruno Le Maire, and the European Commissioner for the Internal Market, Thierry Breton, will also speak at the event.
The plenary sessions of the Digital Assembly will be devoted to the following issues:
- The green and digital transition: This discussion will focus on what the digital sector can do to support the green transition and how it can better measure and reduce its carbon footprint.
- The resilience and future of digital value chains: This session, following on from the Versailles Summit, aims to formulate ideas on a European strategy for the management of digital value chains, keeping digital sovereignty and sustainability top of mind.
- The rebuilding of Ukraine’s digital infrastructure: In view of the war in Ukraine, this discussion will cover the state of the country’s infrastructure and the current and future public- and private-sector funding for rebuilding effort
- The future of the internet: This session will delve deeper into the socioeconomic impacts of new immersive technologies and how best to ensure Europe’s position as a leader in managing the technology building blocks required for their development.
Lastly, technical workshops on digital public-policy issues will be held on the morning of 21 June and tackle such topics as developing digital skills in the EU, making the internet safer for children and promoting the European digital commons.