Estonian EU Council presidency to focus on digital

The digital sphere will be at the heart of Estonia's EU Council presidency, says Kaja Kallas.

Kaja Kallas | Photo credit: Natalie Hill

By Kaja Kallas

13 Jul 2017


As Estonia is a digital country, the priorities of our presidency are very much related to that topic. Luckily many of the important legislative proposals in the digital sphere will reach trilogues during our presidency and of course, our wish is to find agreements on them. 

We hope to show to rest of Europe that digital transformation is a good and progressive thing, where a lot of benefits lie for our people and our companies.

Given that we see many fears related to technology among policymakers, we also hope to help them overcome this by showing them how things work.

We all know that the EU is based on free movement of people, goods, services and capital, but in the digital age one thing is missing from this list: the free movement of data. Free movement of data is essential for the digital single market to function.

However, we see more and more member states trying to restrict it by introducing data localisation requirements. Estonia wants to put the discussions on free movement of data on the table.

In addition to the legislative work, there are many eGovernance tools that we want to introduce in the EU, even if it is just for the duration of our presidency. For example, Estonia hopes that all three institutions can digitally sign off on the outcome of the trilogues.

 

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