As Ursula von der Leyen enters a second term as President of the European Commission, she has published her Political Guidelines with her aims for the next mandate. 

The overall message is a new plan for Europe’s sustainable prosperity and competitiveness. This requires putting research and innovation, science and technology at the centre of the economy. According to the Political Guidelines, Europe’s competitiveness is hamstrung by its lower productivity compared with its global competitors. Central to this is the insufficient diffusion of digital technologies, affecting the ability to use tech to develop new services and business models.

We take a deep dive into some of the key issues of interest from a digital and tech perspective here:

• There will be a focus on the enforcement of the Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act. This will be supported by working with e-commerce platforms to ensure consumers and businesses benefit from a level playing field based on effective customs, tax and safety controls and sustainability standards.
• The EU plans to increase investment in “frontier technologies” such as supercomputing, semiconductors, the Internet of Things, genomics, quantum computing, space tech and beyond.
• Efforts will be focused on becoming a global leader in AI innovation. A priority will be ensuring access to new, tailored supercomputing capacity for AI start-ups and industry through an AI Factories initiative. The EU will also develop an Apply AI Strategy to boost new industrial uses of AI and to improve the delivery of a variety of public services, such as healthcare. A new European AI Research Council is proposed to pool resources, similar to the approach taken with CERN.
• The untapped potential of data needs to be exploited. Access to data is not only a major driver for competitiveness, accounting for almost 4% of EU GDP, but also essential for productivity and societal innovations, from personalised medicine to energy savings. However, many struggle to access the data they need, while large foreign tech companies use European data to fuel their businesses. While ensuring high standards of data protection, open access to data will be improved, notably to support SMEs to fulfil reporting obligations. There will be an EU Data Union Strategy. This will draw on existing data rules to create a simplified, clear and coherent legal framework for businesses and administrations to share data seamlessly and at scale, while respecting high privacy and security standards. 
• To make it easier to bring biotech onto the market, a new European Biotech Act will be proposed in 2025.
• On social media, an EU-wide inquiry will be launched about the broader impacts of social media on well-being. It plans to act against abusive behaviour online with an action plan against cyberbullying.
• It will also review potentially addictive designs in online services, such as infinite scroll, default auto play or constant push. 
• In addition, it will focus on increased digital and media literacy and will extend digital enforcement to ensure that manipulated or misleading information is detected, flagged and, where appropriate, removed, under the Digital Services Act.  It also plans to address the deepfakes that have affected elections across Europe.  It will implement the transparency requirements in the AI Act and strengthen the approach to AI-produced content.
• There will be a Single Digital Booking and Ticketing Regulation, so that people can buy one single ticket on one single platform and get passengers’ rights for their whole trip.

The European Commission plans a more detailed Work Programme in October 2024, which will expand on these outline proposals.  Watch this space for more info!