MUNICH — The EU must ensure that Europe’s own companies are the ones capitalizing on data generated within its borders, and is working on measures to do this, according to the EU’s top digital strategy official.
“My ambition is that European data will be used for European companies in priority, for us to create value in Europe,” Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton said Sunday during a speech at the DLD technology conference in Munich, filling in for Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who had canceled her appearance to attend a peace conference in Berlin.
The EU’s new political leadership, which took office last December, will also use its five-year mandate to push for clear and harmonized rules across the bloc, defining how companies can work with digital information, Breton added.
“You can count on me. I will be extremely clear on the rules that we will apply on companies and entities processing our data in Europe,” he said.
His announcement comes as the EU is set to kick off several initiatives aimed at boosting the bloc’s digital competitiveness, including a strategy for how to better share data across Europe as well as legislation for artificial intelligence technology. These measures are part of a broader push by von der Leyen to bolster the bloc’s “digital sovereignty.”
Referring to the rollout of fifth-generation mobile internet across Europe, Breton dismissed concerns that the Continent is lagging behind other regions worldwide and stressed that the new technology requires tougher security rules than previous generations.
“It is something new, it’s a new architecture,” he said, adding that within the next two weeks, Brussels would release “a toolbox” with guidelines spelling out how national governments can best manage and mitigate those security risks.
At the same time, Breton dismissed calls to exclude specific companies or manufacturers from the 5G rollout — such as China’s telecom equipment-maker Huawei.
“We are welcoming everybody. We just want to be clear that for this specific deployment, we will have specific rules,” he said. “Everybody is welcome in Europe, but more and more, we will issue clear rules and everybody will have to fulfill all of these rules,” he added.
The former French finance minister, who worked as the CEO of French IT consulting giant Atos before he was nominated as France’s EU commissioner, also brushed aside warnings that Europe had fallen behind the U.S. or China in developing cutting-edge technology.
“No, Europe is not lagging behind in this data battle,” he said.
While other parts of the world might be ahead in generating profits from the personal data of consumers, Europe is well-placed to be a front-runner in developing industrial technology using machine-generated data, Breton argued.
“Hopefully, if we all work well together regarding the way Europe will handle its own data, there will be a ‘before’ and an ‘after’ the von der Leyen Commission [took office],” Breton said.
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