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President Ilves at World Economic Forum: Europe will lose its competitive edge without a digital common market

23.01.2014

"Today, Europe does not have a working common digital market and as long as countries do not understand the need to ensure the legislation and infrastructure required for the free movement of electronic services, Europe will lose its competitive edge" told the President, Toomas Hendrik Ilves, today, in addressing the World Economic Forum.

"In Europe, we can already speak about the free movement of people, goods and capital, but not digital services. In fact, our laws and attitude serve to prevent and not facilitate the latter," President Ilves commented.

According to the Estonian Head of State, Europe is lagging behind the rest of the world when it comes to the implementation of e-services and cloud technologies. "Estonia and Finland, who recently digitally signed an agreement at state level to use a shared data exchange layer, could be set as an example here. This is a wonderful example of creating cross-border services and information space shared by countries; hopefully, this will give impetus to the development of the European digital common market," he added.

The Head of State emphasised the same message yesterday, in Davos, at a panel of experts summoned by ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), an organisation that supervises the international administration of the Internet, and chaired by President Ilves. High-level professionals from throughout the world take part in the work of the panel, which represents countries, civil society and enterprises at high level.

In Davos, President Ilves will take part in high-level panel discussions that focus on economy, e-health, the development of information technology and geopolitics. The Estonian Head of State will also have a number of bilateral meetings within the framework of the World Economic Forum, including a meeting with Angel Gurría, Secretary General of the OECD.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) is a Swiss non-profit foundation that organises a summit every year in January, in the mountain resort of Davos in eastern Switzerland. International business leaders, top world politicians, intellectuals and journalists will meet at various events that are taking place during the forum to discuss the economic issues facing the world.

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