Following a successful application to the EU Industry Days, DIGITAL SME will be organising a session during the event on 5^th October from 11:50-12:50, delving into the crucial link between ICT standards and European strategic autonomy.

The session will demonstrate how the industry’s active involvement in standardisation workstreams can enhance autonomy, through practical examples provided by different members of the DIGITAL SME community. For instance, the lessons learnt from the first months of the new DIGITAL SME-led BlockStand project, supporting European blockchain standardisation experts at international level, will be exploited. Other use cases will include artificial intelligence standards use, and blockchain technology use in industry.

ICT standards can only support the EU’s strategic autonomy if the EU and national bodies collaborate closely together with industry. To that end, the industry’s knowledge of its stakes needs to be raised – and its feedback received and understood. While ICT standardisation is often overlooked by large parts of the industry (and in particular SMEs), its economic and strategic value for EU companies is pivotal. The way standards are shaped directly impacts the European industry downstream, with considerable geopolitical stakes. Despite that, they are still commonly perceived as a purely technical matter. Yet ICT standardisation cannot operate in silos. A more comprehensive approach to standardisation, which bridges policy and standardisation circles, is needed – whereby better standards uptake by industry, and SMEs in particular, is ensured.

Industry stakeholders in the audience will thereby be asked to directly share their own insights, with the aim to further relay feedback at political level. Conclusions of the session may for instance be fed to the High-Level Forum on Standardisation, which steers the EU’s work on standards, and of which DIGITAL SME is an active member.

The EU Industry Days are Europe’s annual flagship event focusing on key industrial policy discussions. Intended as a collaborative effort between the EU and the different stakeholders of the European industry, the event provides the opportunity to companies, entrepreneurs, organisations, and ministries to organise their own specific sessions included to the programme. This year’s event takes place in Malaga (Spain), from 4^th – 6^th October. Over 100 speakers are confirmed, including European Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton, and Executive Vice-President of the European Commission Maros Sefcovic.

DIGITAL SME’s panel will be moderated by Alexander Chourreau (DIGITAL SME Junior Tech Policy Officer) and will host Justina Bieliauskaite (DIGITAL SME Innovation Director), Petko Karamotchev (CEO of INDUSTRIA) and Emilia Tantar (Chief Data and AI Officer at Black Swan LUX), both DIGITAL SME experts.

Interested parties can register to follow the session, and the overall EU Industry Days, at the following link – we hope to see you there!