ECIPE Webinar: Leadership in European Digital Policy – What Future Role and Direction for the D9+ Group?

It is time for more member states to take leadership for Europe’s digital economy. Can the D9+ become a new powerhouse for developing Europe’s long-term policy for success?

Launched in 2016, nine countries with a particular interest in matters of the digital economy met to learn from each other and seek common ground on policy issues. Since its founding, the group has expanded into the D9+ initiative and now also includes “guest countries”, but it remains fundamentally an initiative of small and mid-sized open-oriented economies with a strong interest to exploit the economic power of digitalisation and new emerging technologies. In a recent ECIPE report, it is argued that exactly these countries need to raise their profile in the developed of EU digital policies.  

How can the D9+ initiative expand the scale and scope of digital technological change in the European economy? How can it address risks that an over-powering regulatory approach to digital policies in Europe reduces the benefits of the digital transformation? And how can D9+ countries best help to accommodate the ‘portfolio’ effect of digital regulation, balancing the entry of new and burdensome digital regulations by policy reforms that ease the conditions for digital business? And how can the group organise its work more effectively?