EU unveils plans to digitize European industry

The European Commission on Tuesday unveiled its plans to help European industry, small and medium enterprises (SMEs), researchers and public authorities make the most of new technologies, as part of its strategy to create a digital single market.

The Commission presented a set of measures to support and link up national initiatives for the digitization of industry and related services across all sectors, and to boost investment through strategic partnerships and networks.

It also proposed concrete measures to speed up the development of common standards in priority areas, such as 5G communication networks or cyber security, and to modernize public services.

In particular, as part of the plans, the Commission announced that it would set up a European cloud that, as a first objective, would give Europe's 1.7 million researchers and 70 million science and technology professionals a virtual environment to store, manage, analyze and re-use a big amount of research data.

Overall, the plans unveiled would mobilize over 50 billion euros (56.8 billion U.S. dollars) of public and private investments in support of the digitization of industry, according to the Commission.

"As companies aim to scale up across the Single Market, public e-services should also meet today's needs: be digital, open and cross-border by design. The EU is the right scale for the digital times," said Andrus Ansip, European Commission Vice President for the digital single market. Endit