European Digital Infrastructure Consortia (EDICs) are a new implementation mechanism for multi-country projects, first introduced in Decision (EU) 2022/2481 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 December 2022 establishing the Digital Decade Policy Programme 2030. EDICs have been inspired by the provisions on European Research Infrastructure Consortia (ERICs), but differ from them in terms of focus: in fact, their principal realms of action are deployment and industry, not research as was the case for ERICs.

The main objective of EDICs is to provide a legal framework to invest in multi-country projects which, given their scale, cannot be set up effectively by single Member States. Therefore, EDICs will facilitate coordination of funding, and enable speedy establishment and flexible implementation of multi-country projects to create incentives for Member States, while ensuring common standards and interoperability.

In addition, EDICs will contribute to:

• reinforcing Europe's technological excellence, leadership, innovation and competitiveness in critical technologies;
• addressing and solving strategic dependencies of the Union along the digital supply chains;
• increasing the availability and promoting the use of safe digital solutions;
• encouraging an inclusive and sustainable digital transformation of the economy and society;
• promoting digital skills for citizens, fostering gender-balanced participation in education and career opportunities.