12 November 2021

EC TO INVEST NEARLY €2 BILLION TO ADVANCE ON THE DIGITAL TRANSITION

On 10 November, the European Commission adopted three work programmes for the Digital Europe Programme, outlining the objectives and specific topic areas that will receive a total of €1.98 billion in funding. This first set of work programmes includes strategic investments that should be instrumental in realising the Commission's goals for Europe's Digital Decade. The Digital Europe Programme aims to boost Europe's technological sovereignty and bring digital solutions to market for the benefit of citizens, public administrations, and businesses.

The main work programme, worth €1.38 billion, will focus on investment in the areas of, inter alia, artificial intelligence (AI), cloud and data spaces, advanced digital skills, and the wide use of digital technologies across the economy and society, until the end of 2022. Alongside this main work programme, the Commission published two specific work programmes: the first one focuses on funding in the area of cybersecurity, with a budget of €269 million until the end of 2022; and the second one focuses on the set-up and operation of the network of European Digital Innovation Hubs, with a budget of €329 million, until the end of 2023.

The main work programme will include investments, such as the deployment of common data spaces, including for mobility, that shall facilitate cross-border data sharing for businesses, including small and medium size businesses (SMEs) and start-ups, and the public sector, as well as the deployment of a federated cloud-to-edge infrastructure and services. Moreover, it will address the deployment of a secure quantum communication infrastructure for the EU (EuroQCI) that shall offer high resilience against cyber-attacks, as well as the set-up, operations and evolving and continuous maintenance of digital services supporting cross border interoperability of solutions in support of the public administrations (e.g. European Digital Identity).

The work programme on cybersecurity includes investments in building up advanced cybersecurity equipment, tools and data infrastructures. It will fund the development and best use of knowledge and skills related to cybersecurity, promote sharing of best practices and ensure wide deployment of state-of-the-art cybersecurity solutions across the European economy.

The first calls for the Digital Europe Programme will be published by the end of November, and more calls will be published in 2022. The work programmes will be implemented mainly through grants and procurement. More information on the application process is available here.

Source: European Commission