Good morning,

I hope you have been enjoying a peaceful Easter with your family!
 
The DIGITALEUROPE family is growing and we are happy to announce BOSCH as a new member! BOSCH will bring a wide range of expertise and experience as a European company that is heavily engaged in the digital transformation of industries. In particular, our national trade associations and corporate members are looking forward to hearing more on their perspectives for cutting edge areas such as artificial intelligence, IoT and manufacturing 4.0.
 
When it comes to policy, we have been working very closely with our policy groups to advocate on several important issues over the past few weeks. IMCO has received the amendments for Free Flow of Data Regulation which remains on the right track though there is still more alignment needed on mixed data sets. We continue to be concerned on the duplication of the ePrivacy regulation with the GDPR, as well as the hasty and imbalanced discussions on the Copyright Directive. We are however pleased to see that legislators are starting to realise that the lack of a broad Text-and-Data Mining exemption would severely hamper European R&D for important areas such Artificial Intelligence.
 
Talking about R&D and R&I, we have been active in advocating for more targeted EU investments in digital technologies and for more focus on public-private collaboration. We hosted and facilitated a fruitful discussion on the future of EU research in the context of the upcoming FP9 and MFF priorities. DIGITALEUROPE has also prepared a call for actions and recommendations for the MFF which we will share with Presidents Juncker, Tajani and Tusk in the next few days.
 
On sustainability, DIGITALEUROPE continues to advocate for as much alignment as possible with the EU RoHS Directive as, over the past few years, an increasing number of non-EU jurisdictions have copied the EU RoHS Directive as a model of legislation restricting hazardous substances.
 
On taxation, the Commission’s proposal singles out digital activities - targeting related revenues instead of profits - and sets out to establish a taxable nexus for digital business operating cross border, thus overlooking key principles such as no double taxation or permanent establishment. I reacted to the Commission’s proposal in the ARTE TV Journal to recall the importance of a global approach and of ensuring investments and innovation can still happen in Europe. Next steps will be critical to the future of the proposal and we are working closely with our national trade associations in making sure that the ongoing international approach will stay the course.    
 
On a more positive note, we see good results from the National Coalitions for Digital Skills and Jobs which aim at tackling the lack of digital skill across Europe. We see that National Coalitions in 18 countries have created strong ecosystems of digital stakeholders from the private and public sectors, NGOs and social partners. Working together, they contribute to improve European citizens' digital skills. Many of them advise their governments on how to roll out national programmes for digital skills. Under the Digital Skills and Jobs Coalition, DIGITALEUROPE is currently visiting National Coalitions in France, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia to collect best practices, guide them and inspire others. 
 
Finally, I also encourage you to review our position paper on the upcoming fairness in platform-to-business regulation. We believe that our guidance offers a balanced view on how the industry and all political stakeholders can work together on a regulation that supports the innovation and economic growth that thousands of platforms are bringing to the EU.
 
It is in this spirit of greater collaboration that I will be visiting our Japanese and South Korean Members in Tokyo and Seoul later this month, whom I wish to thank for their invaluable support in planning and hosting my visits and meetings, and that I invite you to read today’s newsletter!

Cecilia Bonefeld-Dahl