The Blog of the European Association for Digital Transition
When the history of the big technology companies in the twenty-first century is written, the date of July 29, 2020, might have its place. On that day, the four CEOs of the ‘Big Tech’ Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Apple appeared before the United States House of Representatives antitrust subcommittee, whose members have been investigating their alleged anti-competitive practices for years.
Read more
The EU now has its ‘moonshot’ for the next decade. The German Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy, Peter Altmaier, used this term, which is shorthand for projects that are very ambitious both in time and investment, to refer to GAIA-X, the european cloud services platform that the two strongest governments in the EU, Germany and France, are launching.
Read more
From the beginning of its mandate in December 2019, the new European Commission has been showing strong leadership in Digital Transition. Proof of this is publication of the European Strategy for Data, which has recently been submitted for public consultation.
The European Association for Digital Transition welcomes the Commission’s proposal. Nevertheless, we have provided our observations, detailing our position regarding the proposed benchmarks.
Read more
All developed economies face enormous challenges in their digital transition process, such as what to do about privacy and their citizens’ data, the new labour frameworks brought about by digitalisation and the taxation of large platforms, who are barely anchored in national legislation. The experiences and perceptions of citizens are fundamental to addressing these challenges. To find out more about these experiences, the Center for the Governance of Change (CGC), a part of IE University, has carried out the second edition of a study that, beginning with its title, is focused on Europe. This is European Tech Insights, a report that tries to build, through a comprehensive survey in 11 countries, eight of them European (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Poland, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom), a knowledge base for these digital transition processes.
Read more
Approximately 2% of EU adults have their main source of income coming from what is being called the ‘gig economy’, and up to 8% earn occasional income from these work alternatives. The data, from a study by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, makes it clear that we are facing an unavoidable reality for Community institutions, posing challenges in the areas of taxation and social protection.
Read more
As the weeks pass and the coronavirus crisis evolves, debates about the day after have become increasingly important. The ‘day after’ poses some enormous difficulties: the virus will continue to be here, and the vaccine will still not be a reality. Many hopes have been placed on technology in order for the economy to not remain paralyzed – an economy that, in large part, is based on the movement of people – and to avoid, once again, the nightmare of an outbreak capable of saturating hospitals and ending the lives of tens of thousands of people. More specifically, hopes are placed on the effectiveness of applications that track the proximity of citizens. Like this, health services can contact all those who have been in contact with others who have become sick to apply selective isolation measures.
Read more
Nothing will be the same when this crisis is over. Just as the way we greet strangers will change, we will also put more value on health professionals, the corner pharmacist, our children’s teachers, the cashier at the supermarket. All of them, with different depth and levels of responsibility, have been there as our way of life has collapsed from a public health crisis unprecedented in recent history.
Read more
Is privacy a vestige of the past? Many think that in the midst of the twenty-first century this simple concept has disappeared. Nevertheless, lately the debate seems to be changing, and concern about privacy is experiencing a resurgence. This mood change was largely triggered by the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which showed how personal data was shared and used without the knowledge of users for false purposes, such as influencing various elections.
Read more