Three recent developments demonstrate that the EU has become very serious about driving innovation – and about not letting bureaucracy get in the way

On Monday this week, 14 European member state governments sent a letter to the European Commission and the Dutch government, current Presidency holders of the EU. The letter urged both bodies to make sure that EU regulation does not hinder the development of data-driven technologies, and made the case for a “future-proof regulatory framework.”

A day later, the European Commissioner for Research, Carlos Moedas, joined Alessandro Curioni, Vice President, Europe, IBM Research, for a panel discussion on “Regulation4Innovation” at the European Parliament, stating “we have to put innovation at the centre of every regulatory discussion.” Mr. Moedas described a new innovation tool that will help assess the potential impacts of new regulation on innovation.

And on Wednesday of this week, the EU set out its third set of policies aimed at accelerating a Digital Single Market (DSM) across the 28 Member States by harmonising legislation. This package covers areas such as audiovisual media, e Commerce and platforms.

How do these measures advance innovation?

Let’s take the approach by the European Commission to Digital Platforms in the DSM package. Governments across the world have been grappling with how to handle – and even how to define – platforms. There has been much speculation for some time about how the Commission would address platforms – with some calls for blanket rules across all platforms. However, the Commission has not taken this route and has instead insisted that it will put in place “the right environment to create, attract, retain and grow online platforms.”

This involves:

• Harmonising the mish-mash of laws across Member States;
• Changing old rules that could block innovative business models;
• Enforcing existing legislation before creating new rules;
• Basing any future platform rules on hard evidence of problems;
• Addressing alleged abuse of dominant positions by platform owners through existing competition laws.

The European Commission has recognised that Platforms have many shapes and purposes and the industry is growing and changing so fast that neither blanket “one-size-fits-all” rules nor a defined regulatory set piece would make any sense at this stage.

Interoperability will be on the EU’s radar. This is important. At IBM, we firmly believe that businesses and consumers must be able to switch platforms easily, meaning their data cannot be locked in to any one platform.

Just as data should not be locked in to platforms, neither should it be localised in-country.  We urge the European Commission to remain steadfast – despite data localisation rhetoric by some politicians and businesses – that the free flow of data must be allowed. European Commission Vice-President for the Digital Single Market, Andrus Ansip, recently said that data localisation was a “dead end.” The letter from the 14 member state governments called for the removal of all unjustified barriers to the free flow of data. For some years now, IBM has continuously and publicly called for the protection of cross-border data flows, and we will continue to do so. Data flows are the life blood of the worldwide digital economy and they allow European businesses of all sizes – particularly SMEs – to thrive and to innovate.

Speaking at a public reception recently in Brussels with Vice-President Ansip, IBM’s Chairman, Ginni Rometty, said she believes that Europe has become a more open environment for creating opportunity around data. We urge the EU to stay on that track. We would expect that all future Digital Single Market Policies reflect a similar openness to innovation. If Europe’s political leaders are true to this approach, its businesses and consumers will reap the rewards.

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By Liam Benham, Vice President, European Government and Regulatory Affairs, IBM (photo shown above)