Mr Andrus Ansip Vice President of the European Commission and Commissioner for the Digital Single Market European Commission Rue De La Loi 200 1049 Brussels BELGIUM
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Berlin, November 2014 Mr Andrus Ansip Vice President of the European Commission and Commissioner for the Digital Single Market European Commission Rue de la Loi 200 1049 Brussels BELGIUM Mr Günther Oettinger Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society European Commission Rue de la Loi 200 1049 Brussels BELGIUM Ms Vĕra Jourová Commissioner for Justice, Consumers and Gender Equality European Commission Rue de la Loi 200 1049 Brussels BELGIUM Ms Margrethe Vestager Commissioner for Competition European Commission Rue de la Loi 200 1049 Brussels BELGIUM - 2 - Dear Mr Ansip, Dear Mr Oettinger Dear Ms Jourová, Dear Ms Vestager, Digitalisation offers enormous opportunities to all of us. The framework conditions and chances for growth that major start-up metropolises like Berlin, London, Paris, Prague, Tallinn, Copenhagen, and others offer to digital entrepreneurs striking out on their own, as well as the successful digitalisation of the European industry as a whole, are crucial for the prosperity of Europe. At the same time, this revolution leads us into the era of “Big Data.” It entails a wide variety of possibilities and huge potential for the economy of Europe, as well as for its citizens. Concurrently, the citizens of Europe are paying for the opportunities opening up to them with their personal data, which large platform operators use for commercial purposes and in order to enable the search for products, services, and media and to provide access to same, while, however, significantly influencing said search and access. We stand to profit most from the digital revolution if we remain free to decide ourselves what to pay for by which of our data, and whether or not we do so at all. It is our conviction that it must be ensured that personal data can be easily deleted at any time and transferred to other platform offerings. In our efforts to ensure data protection, we have committed ourselves to discrimination-free searches, transparency vis-à-vis the data subjects, and far-reaching transferability. These are the decisive pre-requisites for fair competition in the digital age. It will be possible for us to establish the framework for innovation, growth, competition, security, consumer protection, and data protection in the digital economy only together, at the European level. With its more than 500 million citizens, the European Union has an attractive single market and significant political means to structure it; the EU must bring these factors into play in order to assert itself against other parties involved at the global level. We wish to join forces with the European Commission in promoting the digitalisation of Europe while setting high standards for competition, security, and the protection of consumers and data by digital governance. Digital innovation must benefit in like manner the economy and society, citizens, the government and administration, as well as enterprises. - 3 - In taking your new offices, you have accepted political responsibility within a central body of Europe for designing these policy areas. As the ministers of the Federal Government responsible for these fields, we wish to offer our support for the major decisions you will be taking in the coming years. As a first step, we would like to present the issues we believe to be relevant for creating digital framework regulations. The Digital Agenda the Federal Cabinet has issued on 20 August 2014 summarises the fields of action the Federal Government will be addressing. This certainly does not comprehensively cover the entirety of all aspects making up the digital world. To cite but one example, we will need to jointly consider how we can effectively counter the new types of crime and extremism in cyberspace. I. Digitalisation in the European economy The decisive factors providing enterprises with opportunities for innovation and growth in the digital sphere, and enabling the digitalisation of the industry and economy in Europe overall, are the freedom to operate, good framework conditions, as well as an excellent and safe infrastructure. In this context, we expressly welcome the investment programme of €300 billion announced by Mr Juncker, President of the European Commission. We believe it will be necessary to place a strong focus on enhancing the digital infrastructure in this regard. Investments into the broadband buildout have significant multiplier effects on growth and thus should be at the heart of these efforts. We would be happy to assist in developing suitable criteria. In order to swiftly roll out the expansion and enhancement of the network infrastructure, moreover, it will be important to involve all providers and all suited technologies in the buildout and to create appropriate framework conditions for this purpose. On the one hand, this concerns the laws governing state aid. In this regard, we are working to ensure the eligibility for subsidies of all suitable NGA technologies. This also includes technologies that permit only virtual unbundling at present, such as vectoring. In this regard, we are pursuing efforts to ensure the swift conclusion of the pending procedure concerning the NGA framework regulation notified by the Federal Government already at the beginning of this year. - 4 - In order to ensure certainty of planning and legal certainty for investments in the digital field while deepening the digital single market, we will need, on the other hand, a regulatory framework within which investments into the buildout of network infrastructure are worthwhile, which restricts itself to justified market interventions, and which safeguards the proper protection of consumers. We should bring these standards to bear also in further discussing the topics to be addressed by the Digital Single Market (DSM) Regulation. In this context, we should reach an understanding regarding the shared principles of net neutrality and should enshrine them in European policy. An important aspect in this context is to maintain the open internet while concurrently allowing for sufficient scope for quality innovations, however. Where the overall review of the telecommunications package is concerned, we will be happy to make a contribution with our expert staff, on short notice if needed, for an exchange of views and experiences on the relevant topics, also in a workshop context, for example. The European Commission has already taken a number of steps as regards venture capital and expansion financing. We intend to tie in with that. We wish to jointly launch the €500 million facility provided by the European Investment Fund for expansion financing, in a scope of up to €30 to € 40 million per enterprise, in the very near future. Our intention is to promote the combination of traditional industry competencies with IT and telecommunications (Industry 4.0) while advancing systematic digitalisation and networking. This should enjoy greater support at the European level, in particular where the Europe-wide establishment of standards is concerned. At the IT Summit, we presented a package of measures regarding the digital agenda of the Federal Government. It will focus on the build-out of the infrastructure, intelligent mobility, the increasing convergence of the various communications technologies, cloud computing, industry 4.0, smart services, smart home, trustworthy ICT, data protection, as well as IT and data security. We intend to more strongly promote those innovations and techniques that serve as the foundation for new big data applications, while concurrently reducing the dependency on the collection of individualised, personal data. We would welcome it if it were possible to achieve even greater synergistic benefits for our national and European research programmes than has been the case thus far, for example where Horizon 2020 is concerned. - 5 - Concurrently, we intend to structure and design work in the digital world such that the fundamental rights of employees continue to be safeguarded. The digital workplace of the future should offer good wages, social security, and should protect workers against demands of limitless availability as well as against surveillance. We would welcome it if the newly constituted European Commission as well could make this a focal aspect of its agenda. In order to continue reducing the administrative burden on enterprises and citizens alike, we must press ahead with the digitalisation of the administration. By further expanding electronic administrative services, Germany is making a significant contribution to improving the digital communications between the economy and citizens on the one hand with the authorities on the other. The role of Europe primarily will be to provide the framework for secure, cross-border administrative services and to promote specific applications. We support the newly constituted European Commission in its vigorous pursuit of this project. II. Market organisation Open markets and fair competition are the basic premises underlying innovation, also in the digital economy. The dynamism in the digital sphere should not blind us to the fact that strong networking effects continue to further strengthen the market power of established platforms while increasing the risk of abuse, such as by leveraging the power to neighbouring markets and giving preferential status to the platforms’ own products and services in search results, for example. Competition policy must ensure that these economic positions of power remain contestable. Wherever these power positions cannot be challenged (any longer),