Making progress on digitising European industry - Main contents

I am looking forward to this morning's roundtable with high-level representatives of national initiatives on digitising industry and to a discussion that draws on the experiences in many countries.

We will have Valerie Ferret and Cécile Dubarry representating the French initiative "Industrie du Futur", Brian Holliday and Clare Marett from the UK's High Value Manufacturing Catapult initiative, Prof. Siegfried Russwurm and Wolfgang Scheremet from Germany's Industrie 4.0 and Prof. Egbert-Jan Sol and Jeroen Heijs from the Netherlands' smart industry initiative. The Finnish programme FIMECC and Industrial Internet, as well as the platforms from Austria and Portugal and the Fabbrica Intelligente technology cluster in Italy are also participating. And we will also welcome European associations from industry and trade unions.

This roundtable follows my announcement at the Hannover trade fair in April of the main elements of my plan to make progress in this important sector of the European economy.

Why such a roundtable you may ask to discuss how to support digitising industry at large?

I believe that all industrial sectors should be able to use new technologies to manage their digital transformation as part of my vision to bring about a Digital Union. One crucial aspect is to make sure that the different national approaches and platforms in this field do not cause fragmentation in this significant area of the digital single market. In general, there is a risk that individual national initiatives remain below the scale needed to tackle the investment challenge that the industry faces. It is important that they can reach the critical mass to be able to attract sufficient capital. So, during the meeting we will explore how we can step up our efforts and join forces. The central question is to identify which actions at EU level would be needed to significantly increase our overall impact. In other words: is there a need to complement national strategies at the European level? And what, if any, additional role should the EU institutions play in this?

Here are my first ideas on the areas with potential for an EU-level action.

First, easy access to digital technologies for all industrial companies, and especially SMEs, wherever they are located in Europe and for any sector: to achieve that we need a backbone of digital competence centres which provide businesses with world class digital expertise as well as testing and development facilities. During the next 5 years the different EU programmes will make available resources for starting to expand the digital innovation hubs all over Europe.

Second, we are aiming for European leadership in digital industrial platforms: our common objective is to ensure the availability of state-of-the-art open and interoperable platforms that any business can use to make its products, processes or services ready for the digital age.

Third, we share the view that preparing our workforce to benefit from the digital transformation is essential for the digital industry to succeed. There is a clear need for promoting digital skills at all levels, for re-skilling, and for lifelong learning across Europe and its regions.

Finally, regulation for smart industry needs to be smart: new digital technologies and business models are challenging existing regulatory systems worldwide, requiring a new way of policy-making.

We will keep working to identify which measures at EU-level need to be taken to make progress in these areas. We will do so together with all major stakeholders to take their priorities into account. As a next step, we are going to organise a meeting with business leaders later in the year to collect the views of the private sector. We plan to present a concrete implementation plan for Digitising European Industry to ministers early next year.