Neelie Kroes:The State of the Digital Union

Opening speech of the first Digital Agenda Assembly_ Welcome to everybody – to everybody in the room, and to those watching online. The Digital Agenda for Europe is there to support citizens, to boost confidence in ICT and to lift Europe’s competitiveness. The Digital Agenda is ICT for you—and with you. We want to be totally transparent about our progress. And you have just seen the results of our Digital Scoreboard – good and bad – on the screen behind me. I will dive into a couple of those issues later. First I want to remind you what the Agenda is for, and why we are here. Consider this speech a “State of the Digital Union”. This is my fifth decade in politics. And in that time you are the most passionate and talented stakeholder community I’ve ever dealt with. So I want you to know that I hear you, and read you online too. Most importantly, I get you. I know we don’t always have the exact same vision. But I am energised by the awareness we share about the significance of new technologies. The internet will change our world. It’s already doing so, economically and socially, in Europe and the developed world. We have seen the role it can play in countries like Tunisia and Egypt. And there are billions more still to come online: they will mainly be young people from emerging economies, and they will have a distinct outlook and needs. Here to read more.