While addressing the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the Estonian President, Toomas Hendrik Ilves, emphasised the need for a common digital market for Europe.
“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,” Ilves said.
“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,” he added.
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.”
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 meet at various events that take place during the forum to discuss the economic issues facing the world.
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Source: Estonian MFA
