EU Countries Need Tighter Collaboration with the ICT Industry

The productivity deficit created by aging population in the EU region can be stabilized only by highly developed ICT technology. No country is able to develop these solutions on its own. The EU must continue to invest more and more into the creation of a digital common market, the removal of legislative obstacles and the identification of innovative solutions.

The need for tighter collaboration within the EU’s ICT sector came up in nearly every speech given at the European Summit on the Future Internet. TIVIT, the Strategic Centre for Science, Technology and Innovation in the Field of ICT, organized this international conference for the third time on May 31st and June 1st in Espoo, Finland, together with SNT, Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust of the University of Luxembourg.

In addition to increasing internal cooperation, the EU must also strengthen its relations with China, the rapidly growing ICT sector of which offers European companies enormous business opportunities and vice versa!

”Within ten years the number of Internet users in China will grow fiercely with the Internet penetration increasing from 30% to 70%. Furthermore, we are among the first countries to migrate to the IPv6 protocol. However, we still need to resolve a number of questions regarding infrastructure, management, design and technologies. This is where European businesses can also be of help,” commented Professor Jianping Wu from Tsinghua University. Wu has significantly impacted the development of the Internet in China.

Finland now has an excellent possibility to embrace the role of bridge-builder in furthering the relations between the ICT industries in the EU and China.

”Not a single EU country has similar relations with Chinese ICT players as Finland does. Finland already acts as an ICT gateway between Europe and China. The consistent work is now starting to bear fruit: the door is open for wider cooperation and to the Chinese ICT market. New cooperation opportunities are opening up to Finnish companies – as well as to players in the ICT industries in other EU countries. We need to learn to create new solutions together,” said Reijo Paajanen, CEO of TIVIT.

Finland’s forerunning position is justified also in the light of numbers.