The COVID pandemic significantly accelerated everyone’s digital transformation and highlighted opportunities and interdependencies locally and globally. The EU has taken several regulatory actions in recent months to drive this digitalisation agenda forward. At the same time, European values remain a central topic. Data protection and privacy continue to be important for many governments, multinational companies and citizens alike following the ECJ declaration of invalidity of the EU-US Privacy Shield agreement.
In all these discussions, questions around digital sovereignty and its implications are being referred to – inter alia as a notion to promote European leadership. In the public debate the definition of digital sovereignty is a multifaceted topic. What strategic capacities should be based in Europe? How will Europe benefit from digital transformation and how should we deal with mutual interdependencies? How do we balance open strategic autonomy, European values, access to technology, innovation, open markets and international trade? What role does the revived transatlantic relationship play in this transformation?
As the Nordic countries have been frontrunners in the digital transformation, we are focusing on the Nordic experience and viewpoints in this webinar. The Nordic countries have many leading digital and tech companies and had an early and broad digital uptake in their societies (see European Commission’s Digital Economy and Society Index, DESI for 2020). This experience makes the Nordic countries an important contributor in the European digital sovereignty discussion.
Please observe that the time is CEST, Stockholm Sweden.
