Make Europe digitally sovereign, secure and competitive

Create a permanent EU Tech Forum to guide digital strategy, build sovereign European digital infrastructure for cloud, AI and data - free from foreign control, accelerate AI deployment with clear, innovation-friendly rules, simplifying EU law through a Digital Omnibus Package and “GDPR-light” for SMEs, as well as protect minors online with age verification and a 16-year minimum for social media accounts. These are some of the policy proposals that the EPP adopted today in a new Position Paper on Digital Policy, entitled “A Sovereign, Secure and Competitive Union”.

“If we fail to secure our technological sovereignty now, others will define our values, our standards, and our future. With our new digital policy paper, we are setting a course for a strong, secure, and competitive Europe – with its own cloud infrastructure, clear rules for artificial intelligence, and better conditions for innovation and start-ups,” emphasised Axel Voss MEP, one of the authors of the Position Paper.

Dóra Dávid MEP, who co-authored the paper, champions new measures to protect children on social media. "We have a youth generation in a mental health crisis. Social media could be a contributing factor. Parents - not algorithms - should be in charge of raising our kids. That’s why the EPP Group will propose access to social media for minors under 16 with parental consent only. We also want to ban platforms from incentivising ‘kidfluencing’, a trend that makes kids dependent on likes, views, feedback, and pressure to create content for commercial gain", Dávid explained.

Andreas Schwab MEP calls on the EU not to bow to foreign pressure: “The timing of this EPP digital policy paper is critical. As the EU faces mounting pressure from foreign tech dominance and coordinated efforts to undermine its regulatory achievements, we reaffirm our commitment to European values of open markets, privacy, and user safety — the very principles that have positioned the EU as a global frontrunner in digital regulation”, said Schwab, who also co-authored the paper.

“We need to think strategically and focus on priority areas - stimulating AI adoption in Europe’s backbone industries, enabling companies to scale seamlessly across borders, and closing the financing gap through instruments such as the Scaleup Europe Fund,” concluded Eva Maydell MEP, co-author of the paper.

The full text of the Position Paper on Digital Policy, "A Sovereign, Secure and Competitive Union” is available here.