I spent a very interesting morning with the German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Polish Premier Donald Tusk. We toured CeBIT 2013 in Hannover looking at a range of – often German – companies and initiatives (Software AG, T-Mobile, SAP, Fraunhofer and so on).
The Chancellor and I are very keen to do more to push start -ups, to create better enabling conditions for them. And we are both worried about the digital ICT skills gap in Europe.
Ich habe heute einen interessanten Morgen mit Bundeskanzlerin Angela Merkel und dem polnischen Premierminister Donald Tusk verbracht. Auf unserem gemeinsamen Messerundgang auf der CeBIT 2013 in Hannover haben wir uns zahlreiche – überwiegend deutsche – Unternehmen und Initiativen näher angeschaut (Software AG, T-Mobile, SAP, Fraunhofer usw.).
Die Bundeskanzlerin und ich wollen bessere Bedingungen für Start-Ups schaffen und sind sehr besorgt über den Mangel an qualifizierten IKT-Fachkräften in Europa.
It was again great to meet my young advisers yesterday. These are talented young digital entrepreneurs – and I love talking to them to get their experience and advice about how we can best support the digital world.
I didn’t want them to say we’re doing well at everything – I want the unvarnished truth. Faced with such a terrible economic crisis, we need to do everything we can to support this flourishing economic sector. And to do that, we need to communicate beyond the “Brussels bubble”: we need to talk and listen to real people doing real jobs on the digital frontline. Read the full entry
Our challenge today is to give our people better job prospects – while also boosting European competitiveness.
Today’s businesses are all going digital and they all need skilled ICT workers. Yet at the moment there aren’t enough workers to meet that huge demand – we could soon have 900,000 unfilled vacancies, even at a time of high unemployment.
There are many possible reasons for this. Maybe people aren’t aware how attractive and enjoyable ICT careers can be; maybe our education systems aren’t giving them the skills businesses actually need; or maybe they don’t feel able to apply for jobs in other EU countries. Read the full entry
Here’s a young man I am VERY proud of, Javier Agüera, founder of Geeksphone who’ve produced the exciting new Firefox smartphone everyone’s been talking about this week.
This is what European mobile pioneering is all about in the 21st century. Plus my own interview with Wall Street Journal.
A few years ago the EU agreed a package of measures for the EU telecoms market. Those delivered important new rules and rights for people who use landlines, mobiles and the Internet – and that means you!
As is usual for such measures, those needed to be put into national law by governments before taking effect. And now, the remaining few national governments have confirmed to the Commission that they have done this – meaning these new laws would now apply throughout the EU.
That’s great news. It means that all EU citizens would now benefit from significant new rights, like: Read the full entry
As the Berlin Film Festival celebrates the best of European and world film – a blog about the opportunities of the digital world for cinema.
In so many areas, I see digital tools disrupt longstanding practices. That disruption brings challenges – but many opportunities, too, with new innovative ways suddenly available to meet specialised consumer needs. The overall effect is a benefit for consumers, for our economy, and our society – as long as you can adapt properly to digital developments. Read the full entry
The Internet is a great place for kids to be – somewhere they can play and learn, socialise and explore.
Of course there are risks online – just like in the real world. But the fact is you can’t hope the Internet will go away: it won’t, digital skills are massively important for tomorrow’s jobs, and kids need to learn how to go online safely and responsibly. So it’s time for us all to work together to promote a better, safer Internet for kids.
The EU has long invested in research in innovation. And quite right too – because this is something essential to building a strong economy, and a strong society. Yesterday I announced two large scale programmes in particular that will benefit from that investment, on a sustained and large scale.
They were:
- The Graphene Flagship programme – looking at a new substance that could one day transform electronics – not to mention transport, healthcare or others. It really is a miracle material, the focus of a lot of research activity. In future maybe we’ll have “Graphene Valley”, instead of Silicon Valley: and maybe it will be right here in Europe.
- And the Human Brain Project, looking at how this incredible machine represents reality. Not just to better our understanding of brain diseases, but maybe also as a new model for tomorrow’s computers. Read the full entry
