News

Today the Commission launches a dialogue on the protection of journalists in the EU with a wide range of stakeholders, including journalists and their associations, news media companies, representatives of media councils, European Parliament, Member States and regulatory authorities as well as international partners.

The Greek National Training School for Public Administration (EKDDA) started regular 3-day training courses on innovation procurement for civil servants in Greece. The certified training program is organized in cooperation with the Greek national competence center on innovation procurement. This certification can trigger more innovation procurement by linking the training to promotion opportunities. Topics covered range from preparation to implementation and monitoring of innovation procurement, joint procurement, case examples, European funding. Next training is planned for 11-13/5/2021.

Today, at the online Digital Day 2021, Ministers representing EU Member States signed three Declarations to pool efforts and resources to promote international connectivity, incentivise the rollout of clean digital technologies and improve the regulatory environment for start-ups and scale-ups. These tangible commitments will help accelerate Europe’s green and digital transformation and will contribute to the vision and goals of Europe's Digital Decade.

The Europeana Common Culture project analysed the state of the art of European National Aggregators working to increase the number, quality and easy searches for digitised cultural heritage objects and art.

At Digital Day 2021, 25 Member States, as well as Iceland and Norway, committed to reinforcing internet connectivity between Europe and its partners in Africa, Asia, the European neighbourhood, the Western Balkans and Latin America, by signing the Declaration on “European Data Gateways as a key element of the EU’s Digital Decade”.

26 CEOs of companies have signed a Declaration to support the Green and Digital Transformation of the EU.

24 Member States and Norway and Iceland have signed a declaration to accelerate the use of green digital technologies for the benefit of the environment. They will deploy and invest more green digital technologies to achieve climate neutrality and accelerate the green and digital transitions in priority sectors in Europe, for example by using the NextGenerationEU and InvestEU funds.

Today at the EU Digital Day 24 EU Member States and Iceland signed the declaration on Startups Nations Standard of Excellence, to support startups across Europe in each stage of their development.

Norway's support to pre-commercial procurements (PCP) has been a huge success, leading to the commercialization of the world's first self-driving snow clearing vehicles, emission free public ferry boats and the world's largest full-scale carbon capture, transport and storage system to combat climate change. Since over a decade, the Norwegian Research Council launches a yearly call to financially support Norwegian public buyers in preparing and/or implementing PCPs. This year Norwegian procurers are invited to submit applications for the new 200 million Kroner call until 15 September 2021.

With 30% of EU farms being managed by women, these farmers are key in driving the digital transformation of rural areas. As explained by Lotta Folkesson, an arable farmer in northern Sweden, high-speed connectivity is needed to allow the use of cutting edge technology in both agriculture and forestry, as well for everyday management. On top of this, it enables entrepreneurship and allows remote area inhabitants to connect with the wider community. “With good infrastructure, we will have a stronger farming community as well as better conditions to attract more people to rural areas”.