European developments May 2017

Policy developments:

The European Parliament approved new rules concerning content portability, which allow EU citizens to access their streaming movie and TV subscriptions while visiting other EU countries. The new rules will remove restrictions so that EU citizens can use online services such as Netflix, HBO Go, Amazon Prime, Spotify and Deezer while in another EU country for holidays, studies or business. Also see commentary from CCS Insight.

The European Commission and the Innovation and Networks Executive Agency (INEA) launched the second Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) Telecom call for 2017 on 6th May 2017. The call makes €25.5 million available to stimulate and support the deployment of European Digital Service Infrastructures (DSIs). Proposals must be submitted by 21st September 2017.

The European Commission published the annual Europe's Digital Progress Report (EDPR), which monitors progress against the Digital Single Market Strategy across Member States (also see the related press release). While the EU is making steady progress overall, the differences between the top and lowest performing states is significant. All Member States have national broadband plans and minimum 30Mbit/s services are now available to 76% of homes. Also see commentary from Out-Law in relation to plans set out in the review  to make it easier to move data between cloud providers.

The European Commission announced that the European Parliament, the European Council and the Commission had reached a political agreement on the WiFi4EU initiative, which supports free public WiFi hotspots in local communities across the EU. The three European Union institutions will ensure that €120 million is assigned to fund equipment for public free WiFi services in 6,000 to 8,000 municipalities in all Member States. See previous updates from December 2016 and September 2016 for more background on WiFi4EU.

The Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) announced three new public consultations on the following documents: BEREC Medium-term strategy 2018-2020, Internet protocol interconnection practices in the context of Net Neutrality and BEREC regulatory methodology for quality of service assessment for the implementation of Net Neutrality provisions.

New studies and reports:

The European Parliament published the results of a study conducted by the European Union Agency for Network and Information Security (ENISA) for the European Parliament’s Science and Technology Options Assessment (STOA) Panel. The study identified risks, challenges and opportunities for cyber-defence in the context of the EU Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). It sets out five high level objectives: maintenance of coherent cyber policies and strategies across the EU; promotion of a cybersecurity culture; development of cyber-skills through education and training; enhancement of the legal and regulatory frameworks; and development of standards, organisation and capabilities.

Liberty Global (which owns Virgin media) announced that  the economic impact of its investment in broadband infrastructure between the start of 2013 and the end of the first quarter of 2017 generated social benefits worth €7 billion in Europe, according to analysis by Oxera Consulting. The report follows on from the November 2016 launch of Liberty Global’s GIGAWorld initiative; more background on this here.

Further EU studies and reports published this month:

• Final results of the European Data Market study measuring the size and trends of the EU data economy: this found that 6 million people in Europe worked in data-related jobs in 2015 and 6.16 million in 2016. It is estimated that under a high-growth scenario, the number of data workers in Europe will increase up to 10.43 million by 2020.
• A Eurobarometer survey presenting European citizens' opinions on the impact of digitisation and automation on daily life: European citizens see digitisation and automation primarily as an opportunity but call for investment in better and faster internet services as well as effective public policy to accompany changes, in particular in areas such as employment, privacy and personal health. The more people are informed or use technologies the more they are likely to have a positive opinion of and trust them.
• The final report of the study ICT for Work: Digital Skills in the Workplace on the impact of information and communication technologies (ICT) on the transformation of jobs and skills: digital technologies are now used in all types of jobs, also in economic sectors not traditionally related to digitisation, such as farming, health care, vocational training and construction.