“Thank you. Hello, everyone.I am rapporteur now for the draft report. We are acknowledging the report, which is very important and very important moment as well. The report is emphasizing the critical need for the EU to achieve technological sovereignty and ensure competitiveness, security and strategic independence. It also raises the EU heavy dependence on foreign technologies, particularly from the US and Asia, which could pose significant risks to sensitive data and limits our strategic autonomy. So we also hear the discussion that took place here, that there are several aspects under the current geopolitical situation that could be added and reinforced in the report. Many of them members of Parliament, mentioned data, Eurostat, public procurement rules and looking into skills which are also very much on our agenda. Short points a few points to make. I will start with the technological sovereignty and relying basically the fact that we are still relying on occupants from various suppliers. This not only concerns telecommunication networks, in particular 5G, but it's much broader. And this is also something that we are very closely looking into. So basically extension of the possibility to to reduce the exposure or to limit completely exposure to high risk suppliers in our networks. The second point is about in artificial intelligence, what we are missing in the report is the fact that we do started quite significant investments in artificial intelligence with the initiative that Commission President von der Leyen announced in a action summit in Paris, with mobilization of investments and European fund of 20 billion for the AI giga factories.”
EU digital & tech sovereignty · 5G
“So this is very important element. The third point that I would like to make is again, concerning control of the communication infrastructure and something that was also very much raised here in the discussion, which is concerning cable deployment and repair capacity for our submarine cables. The Commission just recently published a cable action plan, which looks not only on data cables, but also more broadly, also on the electricity cables in general, where critical infrastructures under the seas. It is, of course, very much responding to the incidents that happened, in particular in the Baltic Sea. But it's also something that we need to really follow closely. And we are having several actions, including potential reparation repair, capacity enhancement to make sure that we can react quickly in case of the incidents. The second point is relating to space. The report is mentioning the Starlink and 4000 satellites on the orbit. We would like to raise attention to Iris square in this context and mentioning that satellite operators can access the EU market but complying with international rules. So this is a very important point for us. And last but not least is spectrum roll or spectrum policies in particular regarding the satellite sector, but in general also sixth generation, which is super important. We face too much fragmentation in the past. Thank you.”