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What is the digital single market and why
is it necessary?
In 2010, with Europe in the midst of a macroe-
conomic crisis, the new European strategy for
the coming decade was published under the ti-
tle
Europe 2020
. The role of this strategy, the
successor to the Lisbon Strategy, was to estab-
lish the goals and actions that would not just
enable Europe to come out of the crisis but
would also put it back on the path to growth.
Three adjectives describe this growth:
smart
,
based on the added value that comes from in-
novation;
sustainable
, reducing our economy’s
carbon footprint; and
inclusive
, seeking social
cohesion and poverty reduction.
These ideas about what Europe should be like
in 2020 were used as the basis for defining a set of
specific goals that make it possible to measure pro-
gress and to identify how much work still needs to
be done. The Europe 2020 Strategy establishes five
objectives: employment, R&D, climate change,
education, and the fight against poverty and social
exclusion. Each of these objectives is accompanied
by a series of indicators, adapted to reflect the ac-
tual situation in each country, which has to exceed
a given threshold by 2020.
In order to achieve these objectives, seven
key initiatives have been established to develop
the smart, sustainable, inclusive growth that the
strategy aims to deliver. The first of these initia-
tives is the Digital Agenda for Europe, whose
aim is to promote the use of new technologies
in order to foster innovation and economic
growth. This Digital Agenda for Europe, in turn,
consists of seven pillars, one of which is the
achievement of the Digital Single Market which
is the focus of this report.
Digital Single Market
As noted above, in 2010 Europe was in the
midst of a major economic crisis that required
measures to enable it to exit the crisis and re-
cover lost growth. One of the objectives is to
increase the efficiency of European businesses
and to help them become more competitive
globally, in turn enabling them to generate jobs
and resources.
Another issue that required attention was
the need to strengthen Europe’s position in the
internet economy. In amore and more intercon-
nected and globalized world, the low profile of
Progress towards a european
digital single market in 2014
Jorge Pérez Martínez, Carlos González Valderrama