 Good afternoon, a very warm welcome to you all and I hope you're keeping well and staying safe. My name is Joyce O'Connor and I chaired the digital group here at the IIEA. You're all very welcome to our webinar today where we will discuss the proposition, a transatlantic partnership for Europe's digital future with Carl Bilt. I'm delighted Carl to welcome you back to Dublin. It's a long while since you've been here in person but we're absolutely delighted to see you virtually. Carl as you know is co-chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations and is the former Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Sweden. Carl, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule to be with us today. We appreciate it very much and we look forward to your presentation. This is the third event in the IIEA project entitled Europe's Digital Future, which is supported by Google. This project is exploring the topic of digital sovereignty in Europe. It's a year-long project of events and research exploring what the concept means and what future it might hold for the Europe in general and for small local economies like Ireland in particular. Carl will speak to us for about 20 minutes or so and then we'll go to you, the audience, for questions and answers. Please feel free to join a discussion during Carl's presentation. You will see the Q&A function at the bottom of your screen. You may wish to send in your questions throughout the webinar. I will come back to you then when Carl has finished his presentation. I'd very much appreciate if you would give your name and designation when you give in your questions. A reminder that this event is on the record, both the presentation and the Q&A. Please join us on our discussion on Twitter with our handle using the IIEA. Over the last year, I think we can safely say that we've been all preoccupied with COVID-19 and its effects. It is certainly true of our European leaders. Today, Carl Bilt will alert us to another looming crisis, and that is of a digital emergency. This crisis he sees is placed in the context of a strain in the EU and US digital relationships. This strain cannot be ignored as Europe is falling rapidly and inexcusably behind China and the US in its digital transition. We will hear from Carl about the importance of the Atlantic digital partnership where the US and the EU can join forces on digital policy and digital trade. The role of emerging technologies such as AI, quantum computing, blockchain will create opportunities for forward-looking cooperation. As Carl sees this, Europe has a choice in determining its digital future. It can either work towards a digital sovereignty or seek a digital partnership. Has that time come? I think Carl's presentation is very timely. Carl, as you know, has a very distinguished career to date. He has served, as I said, as both Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Sweden. He was an early advocate of ICT's technologies and was one of the first to send an email exchanged between himself and President Clinton, and that was the first email between heads of states. That was back in 1994. You may not remember that, Carl, but it is a marker of your interest and historical significance. Carl has served on corporate boards in the US and Sweden, as well as on different international things, thanks. He was co-chair of the Dayton Peace Talks on Bosnia and became their first high representative in the country. Currently, he is co-chair, as I said, of the European Council on Foreign Relations. He is a columnist in the Washington Post and Project Syndicate, as many of you know. He recently chaired the Global Commission on Internet Governments. He is on the board of the Rand Corporation in the US and is one of the senior advisors to the Wallenberg Foundations in Sweden. Carl, we look forward to your presentation. Thank you very much, and I would have liked to be able to say that it's nice to be in Dublin. Yes. But it's nice to be in Dublin also in this digital sense. I have fond memories of discussions over previous years at the IIA, and I'm impressed with the commitment that you have to making your contribution not only to the Irish debate, but indeed to the European debate. That's what we need. We need more of a think-tank dialogue on the issues that are facing us together so as to make it easier for policymakers and policy shapers of different sorts to move us forward together. You referred to the fact that I've said sometimes that we face a digital emergency in Europe. I said that to a certain extent, not as a reaction to, but inspired by the fact that there's a lot of people saying that we are facing a climate emergency. I'm not denying that, but I'm just saying that for all of the attention that we give to the climate issues, I think there is high time to give more attention to the digital issues, what we need to do, what we have to do, and how we will shape the digital future of Europe. Because what is happening is, I think, fairly obvious, and it's taken a giant leap forward during these very difficult months, now a year, that we have been struggling with COVID and with the pandemic and with all other restrictions. We are leaving the industrial age, and we are entering the digital age. I mean, sometimes there is talk about the fourth industrial revolution. I think that is not entirely correct. I think it's far more than that. It is leaving the age of the industrial revolution and entering the age of the digital revolution. And in much the same way as we know that the industrial revolution, it is different stages, transform not only our societies, but in our world. In virtually every respect, power relationships, within different parts of the world, notably, the same will obviously happen as we enter the digital age. And we should understand that we are only in the rather faint beginning of the digital age and the transformation it will entail. I'm fond of making the historical comparison with the beginning of the industrial age. We started really sort of in England or Britain or whatever. We prefer to call it with sort of the steam engine and the coal mines and whatever. And that made it possible for Great Britain of those days to develop a world empire and be the leading power of the world for perhaps nearly a century. And the Americans obviously took over for a number of reasons. And we are now in the same development that we are probably, I would say, we are, if we make that comparison, we are in the stage of the second generation steam engine. We are at that stage of the digital revolution. And that is a way of saying we're only in the beginning. There's enormous amount of things that is going to happen and it can profoundly change our world. So then where are we in terms of the different powers of the world. I think it's fairly obvious that we are now primarily in a race between the United States and China. The United States remains the innovation superpower of the world. The innovative potential of the US economy with all of the other problems that the US economy has is impressive. We live by devices and technologies that to a large extent have the origin in that innovative atmosphere, that innovative entrepreneurial atmosphere that is associated with the Silicon Valley and with the United States. But there are the Chinese and they are coming from virtually nowhere if we go back 15 and 20 years in time. And although it's popular to say that they've been developing by stealing technology, of course they have to some extent, catch up countries normally do. But we should not underestimate the entrepreneurial potential of China. And what we see them if the United States is to simplify somewhat the innovation superpower still. China is developing as the application superpower. They are extremely good at taking the technologies and making applications of them. We don't see all of that as of yet because China is its own sphere. But what they're doing in terms of different technologies and application of this is profoundly impressive. And will shape the world as we go ahead. And as said, in spite of the intense rivalry between the two, the synergy between them is very important. If you look at the eight leading technology companies in the world, two things should be said, none of them existed 20 years ago. And of the eight companies, five are American and three are Chinese. That's not a single European company among the leading technology companies of the world. And that is of course a memento to us Europeans. If you talk about the Industrial Revolution are significant European companies that are still there. But if you talk of those shaping the digital age, we are not really there. The Brussels debate, which is important because it shapes a lot of the things that is happening in the European Union. As tended in my opinion to be too dominated by the necessity to regulate the different digital phenomena, primarily in order to regulate the big platform economy, the platforms that are so important to our economies at the moment. There's been a fear that other Facebook's and whatever are going to take over our world. And we Europeans would be the regulatory superpower to make certain that this is done in a good way. I'm not saying that they seem to need to regulate the platform says we have that debate in Europe. We have that debate on the other side of the Atlantic as well. But I'm somewhat worried that there's too much focus on that and too little on what I think we really need to concentrate on. That is the need to innovate. You can regulate what was innovated yesterday, but the real important thing is to innovate what's going to happen that tomorrow. What's going to be the five or 10 year out while the platforms are essentially something that was created 10 or 15 years ago, although it's therefore the impact on the global economy is seen now. So, for example, GDPR, I think it's somewhat too cumbersome for smaller medium size enterprises I hope there will be a possibility to look at it and simplify it somewhat. But it is of course an expression of the fact that privacy of different sorts is a European concern perhaps slightly more than what we find certainly that in China, they don't have much of a choice in that respect, but also to a certain extent, of course, in the United States. So we then lagging behind. If we look at the number of unicorns, companies, startups, high tech startups that have gone more than a billion dollars in worth. I lost the figures, as a matter of fact, but I mean you know roughly, we are severely lacking behind. In Sweden today we have five new of them's not too bad by European comparison, but it ought to be more. But if I look at them, what's the reason we are falling behind it I would identify three reasons for that. The first is that we are lagging behind in basic spending or research and development. There was a commitment by the EU countries. Quite some time ago I think in 2000 as a matter of fact, which is nearly a generation ago by now to spend 3% of GDP on R&D. After 20 years we aren't there. Even in Finland spends more than 3%, but nearly everyone else is behind and I think the average is 2.4 or something like that. While we see both the Americans and the Chinese now increasing spending tremendously and increasing spending primarily or to a large extent on basic research which is even more important because that's where you really get the real potential for innovation. So that's the number one factor. We must step up spending on basic research in these areas. We've got the talent. We're not more stupid than others, but of course talent goes to where the research money is. They go to for example from Europe quite a lot. They go to the big American universities because they are better funded than the European ones. That's very obvious. Secondly is capital. If you start a company, if you've got this brilliant idea coming out of university to technical high school or whatever, and you start the company and you start growing, you need capital. And you need venture capital. You need it faster, you need it in great quantities. That's a problem in the European economies. It's far better than it used to be, but it's not enough. So this is a study done of Nordic startups. And normally at the third round of financing, they go to the US. Not that they sort of have a genetic tendency to go to the US, but they go to the US because the money is there. They can't the depth of the capital markets and venture capital isn't enough in Europe to finance fast moving technology startups. And accordingly, we lose them primarily to the US. Another moment is of course that if you compare European countries, the country that is doing better than others are the bits, and you might have noticed that they have left the European Union. So that makes the EU figures even more disturbing. And the third reason is of course market size. If you have that sort of successful startup and you finance and finance. You also need to have income and that is to go to the market. And the American market is more integrated. And accordingly, you can reach the market size that you need to be self sustaining faster on the US market than you can do it on the European markets because we have not yet been as successful as we would have wanted to be on the digital single market. So that's the reasons spending on basic research venture capital and market size. I think are the reasons why we are not having that possibility to develop as fast as otherwise would have been the case. As I said, a lot of the discussion in Europe is in terms of digital sovereignty or digital autonomy or what it is, and regulate the American platform. I mean there's merit in some of that. But I would argue that we need to look at the bigger picture as we look ahead. There is the rivalry between United States and China. Primarily in the field of technology. And if you look at the transatlantic world and we go back some years you remember that we had something called a TTIP. We tried to have a transatlantic trading investment partnership, which was going to be sort of the economic equivalent to NATO in terms of a bond across the Atlantic and setting the standards for the world. Of course setting the standards for the world because if you link it up the Atlantic economies that in itself was going to be sort of the global standard by definition now TTIP is gone and will not come back. There's not an appetite for those sorts of things with the Biden administration wasn't with the Trump administration either needless to say. We need perhaps to focus now on the digital space instead where we Europeans can try to go it alone, but we will not catch up with Americans will not catch up with the Chinese sufficiently fast. But we can tie in with Americans more than we have been doing so far. The European Commission put a paper on the table in late December as an invitation to the Biden administration. And a part of that paper is to have a digital partnership and set up accounts between the US and the Commission in this particular case to discuss these tech issues and what we can do together. And I think that is the way to go. They're quite complicated issues that needs to be sorted out quite fast. And one of them that is rather acute is the question of data transfers. Nowadays, what we have container ships across the oceans with all of the goods. That's still very important, particularly today when the source canal has been blocked by a container ship, but even more important is of course the digital flows. That is really the lifeblood blood of the global economy. And that data flow has been somewhat regulated. And we have the problem that the European EU court has been turned down the, the agreements that have been there between the EU and the US on the free flow of privacy of personal information across transatlantic that needs to be unblocked, because if we have sort of walls that prevent the free flow of data between Europe EU and US that will inhibit the development of the transatlantic global economy. We also have this thing called United Kingdom in the middle of it that has to decide where they are going to be in this particular situation. So our privacy concerns are there, but there are privacy concerns in the US as well. And we are in this slightly bizarre situation that since the European Court of Justice or EU Court of Justice to be precise. They can't go into what individual countries do because of national security. So they can't have any right over the sort of surveillance that the billions of the French have, but they can have views on what the Americans do. And what they've done now is to say that the Americans are somewhat too intrusive for their taste. But as a matter of fact, the Americans in these in a number of these fields are less intrusive than other French to take that as a concrete example. And that makes it of course a fairly difficult dialogue across the Atlantic when we are saying to the Americans you have to change in order to respect privacy but we don't care about the French, who are doing even more in this particular context. Here we need a dialogue fairly fast in order to prevent blockages of the data flow which are absolutely central also to innovation and to research in this particular space. We need to sort out issues of digital taxation. I don't need to go into that I mean you've had examples relating to Ireland as well. And I think that long term of course the digital economy will need another taxation system that it has adjusted as what happens with the industrial age came instead of agricultural age that sort of affected the taxation system over time, but this has to be done together. We can't do that in confrontation because then we create another layer of new barriers across the Atlantic. We need to look far more thoroughly at what we can do together in terms of basic research and the flow of knowledge and innovation across Atlantic artificial intelligence will shape the future. And there are now sort of massive investments underway in artificial intelligence, money in Europe as well needless to say, but nothing compared or very little compared with what we see in the United States and what we see in China. So we have fairly big program underway in Sweden in terms of quantum computing, which is sort of 10 years out when it comes to real applications, but we'll have a transformative effect. If that succeeds, but even if I can be proud of what is done in Sweden in this particular space, we are a small country, and we are sort of dependent upon other European countries being part of that particular race as well, and lining up with the other countries. I think the basic strategic issue is that if we try to do all of this alone, they did it in serenity and do things that if not by design but then by default makes it more difficult to cooperate across the Atlantic. We are over time, leaving this particular race to the Americans and to the Chinese. There are, and I will conclude on that. There are areas where we are successful and where we are dominating in the on the global tech space. Sweden and Finland has two of the leading companies in the world when it comes to 5G. So we are technology leaders, we have been technology leaders in that technology for 20 years. It's not sad to note, and everyone agrees that 5G will be key to the next stage in economic development. And when you add AI to it as well, even more transformative. But it is somewhat sorry to note that the Chinese are way ahead of the Americans in the rollout of 5G, part of that supplied by European companies by the way. The Americans are far ahead of the Europeans, almost all of it supplied by European companies. And that illustrates the fact that while we can have sometimes the technology leadership. We evidently don't have the regulatory and other environment to implement it sufficiently fast. We are years behind the Americans and the Americans are years behind the Chinese on 5G based on European technologies. If we coordinated somewhat more with Americans, so we were catching up with them. That would make it easier for us together to catch up with the Chinese. Otherwise, I think we're heading forward that is going to be dominated by a continued rivalry between Americans and Chinese and we Europeans left behind in the dust. Thank you. Karl, thank you so much for that presentation just set in a sense the road map very clearly ahead, and the choices that we have, and in some ways you make a very compelling argument for that alignment between the EU and the US. And I suppose, you know, when you said that the the previous attempts at, you know, TTIP, where, you know, has gone, I don't know what you think about Senator Mark Warner's attempt now for a democracy technology partnership that he's putting through Congress at the moment. And, you know, what are your thoughts on this development without address some of the issues that you've raised so clearly. I haven't, I haven't seen the details of that particular proposal but I've seen other proposals and coming out of the think thank community in DC and I think that probably is inspired by them. That's quite a lot of regulatory approach. Absolutely. Controls are not that might not be bad in itself. But I still think that we need to focus more on innovation. Yeah, you can you can you can regulate the technology of today or of yesterday. But hardly what comes tomorrow and and it's really sort of innovate in order to be shaped in order to be able to shape the future that I think is the key. Really, there is a need to look at certain technologies and control them so that they're not working in favor of more authoritarian systems of government. Going back to what I discussed on the privacy shield and safe harbor and the data transfer problems across the Atlantic. That has to do with the fact that sort of governments do have the need to undertake a certain amount of surveillance. I mean, that's done in Sweden for intelligence and for domestic security purposes. But what we do in our countries we have it fairly, fairly, fairly detailed regulated by law and by parliamentary oversight. And we should be open and honest about that, but we should also have an element of common standards on how you do that in democracies. Understanding that there are the regimes that do it very differently. And that's an area where clearly democracies have to work together common standards, and then perhaps to the extent that we can not supply technologies that are used for these purposes to regimes that have another orientation easier said than done has to be said because some of them are fairly good in themselves. Thanks Karl I've got a question here coming in from the audience point Paul Sweeney, who's an economist economist and an IEA member, and he asked the question. Do you support a more interventionist EU industry policy to encourage EU tech firms to grow, or do you prefer a hands off free market system, or a combination of the interventionist EU states in the market. Well, as I said, I mean the three things that I would focus on is spending on basic research. That's, that's public money. Development is to a large extent done by by by industry. I don't know the European figures, but I know the Swedish figures I mean we spent 3.4% of GDP on R&D. But 0.9% of that is basic research the rest is development done really by four or five big industries but base basic research. As I mentioned is venture capital must be available. I mean there's a taxation issue that and there's a regulatory issue when it comes to that part of the capital markets. We need to do better in terms of venture capital markets, and we need to have the digital signal market, which is of course a question of sort of deregulating or have the common regulation across Europe. I could add, I mentioned 5G towards the end. The fact that we we allocate spectrum differently in the different countries means that it's very difficult to roll out 5G as fast as the Americans and the Chinese do it. It might be somewhat utopian, but if we have sort of a common European spectrum space that we allocate it in common. I think that would make it far easier for for for that part of it. Industrial policies. Yeah, sometimes. Sometimes that could be need for public spending. But I do think that if you and basic research absolutely. If you look at sort of the innovation potential of the American economy it is to large extent coming in the private sector. If you look at the Chinese economy. It's just the same as a matter of fact. I mean the really innovative Chinese companies. They are sort of private entrepreneurs. They get state support in terms of financial markets, but it's not the big state owned corporations that are driving Chinese economy there drag on the on the Chinese economy then you have certain programs that I think can be useful they have the battery alliance at the moment, trying to get sort of help big battery producing facilities come up and running in Europe and talk about a hydrogen alliance. I'm talking some countries about sort of cloud computing systems that we should set up perhaps. I'm not entirely certain of that I think the market might do it better and there is no, no, no inherent reasons why we Europeans can do it better than others can do it but I mean, might be, but I wouldn't spend. I would prefer to spend the tax pays money. I would spend primarily on basic research to give the talents that we have in Europe, really the possibility to come up with to develop. What one of the things you've said before Carl is that is a kind of more basic thing isn't about the culture in Europe and the values and particularly the entrepreneurial culture and greater risk aversion is that is you know we've heard about this for a long time. Do you think there's been a change or what fundamentally is it about Europe that this has been always a criticism that we like that entrepreneurial flair. It's a fact. You can discuss why history is a rather complicated thing. But, but, but I think it should be said it's better than that than it was 20 years ago. I mean, I can look at my own country primarily, whereas was fairly barren landscape. 20 years ago, but is now much more vibrant landscape. We do see startups and interesting companies appearing all over the place. So we are gathering speed in Europe no question about that. I had reason to look at sort of Ukraine. As an example where sort of it outsourcing is booming. But we need to do whatever we can to speed up that particular process. Yeah, no way. So I think things are improving and what you said about Sweden is definitely true of Ireland as well. You mentioned about the cloud and you know the guy X project for a European crowd is often considered a flagship initiative for the European digital sovereignty, but it's open to us companies to participate. Andrew Gilmore asked, do you do you have thoughts around that for, you know, for the future in terms of tech alliance with the US? Well, let's see. I haven't made up my mind because I've not been able to get sufficient information on what it really would entail. With cloud you are sometimes you hear the fears that sort of if you have your data up in the cloud you don't control your data. Yes. And if the data is located there when the cloud is located God knows where you lose control of the particular data. To me the answer of that is not the location of the cloud, but the encryption of the data. If I can have reliable encryption of my data, it can be stored anywhere because they can't access the data anyhow. And encryption is a somewhat sensitive subject sometimes, not talked about too much, but absolutely key. I have been fighting political battles, by the way, with European security agencies that have been discussing to have back doors and whatever to encryption. I'm distinctly against that. I think we should have the right to secure our data. And if we have the right to secure our data. If the cloud is located in the Norway or Nicaragua is necessarily the deciding picture that one should be aware of its. Then the other with the other aspects of the security offered needed to say I mean there's a sort of the cables and the satellites and things like that but I would say the encryption is more important than the location of the survey in question. If you see, you know, emerging technologies like the blockchain technologies with that help in that regard, in terms of security trust and transparency, or do you think that's that's something, you know, we just don't know enough about yet. I think it could be helpful. I mean applications that could be distinctly helpful. It's one of these technologies that are starting to develop associated very much with sort of Bitcoin and currencies, but there are numerous other applications where blockchain will be very important. So absolutely is one of the technologies that could be very helpful. And there is a kind of push on that blockchain technology and is an area perhaps where Europe could really take a lead in it if we work together because that's the nature of that technology. That that is the nature of the technology but but the nature of the technology is often is often a global just to tell stories about that. I mean, I, I mentioned I was heading the global global Internet Commission on Global Internet Governance a couple of years ago and I remember. I had hardly heard about blockchain because this was quite some time ago, and I had a very good friend, Chinese from Hong Kong, one of the really brilliant people and we were sitting in South Korea and he said to me do you want to meet a person that has really done blockchain is one of the best in the world. Okay, blockchain. Okay, so I met the guy and he was a Bulgarian working in South Korea. I couldn't understand anything of what he said. But anyhow, he was a Bulgarian working in South Korea. And then I got an email from same Chinese friend a month or two ago and said do you want to meet another one of the most brilliant guys. Well, he happened to be in Sweden working in California but he was at home. And these are sort of a communities of really innovative thinkers. Yes, that you can't you can't pin them down to geographic locations they're all over the place. That's true. Yes. And we must connect to that. That sort of group of truly innovative people who you find all over the world and that connect with each other. And I think that is beginning to happen and it's because they have a vision of what that technology can do to change the world for the better. I think that's, you know, that's what kind of brings them together that collaboration. I have a question here from New York City from Ted Smith. And could you European universities do more to free its faculty to create joint ventures with for profit tech startups, as is in the model in the US. Yeah. Yes. I assume they can do more. I don't know exactly how it is in every, every single European country. Exactly. There has been a conscious effort to make it more possible. And we've also seen concrete examples of that, whether that is the model in all of the European countries, I don't know that that is important. And that is a question sometimes a complicated IP rights. Where do they rest with the university or with the individual or whatever, but these things can be sorted out and I think it is moving in the right direction. So we've started some very innovative links between industry and universities around PhD programs, where they work with industry on an industry problem, and have worked out those issues beforehand. And that kind of offers read possibilities. A great believer if funding is geared towards cooperation like that, you know, researchers will will follow that if they see their leading edge technologies I think can be very, very instructive. Here now from Emily Benchy. How would you interpret President's Biden's nomination of Lena can as the FTC commissioner. Could this point to alignment of anti trust competition policies, relation to tech joints in the US and the EU remains to be seen. I would hope that that would be a dialogue on these issues. I don't think it has started as of yet. We are only sort of weeks, two months into the new American administration. But clearly this is an area that where there should be a dialogue between Washington and and Brussels. And I would add that I'm encouraged by the fact that there is talk, not only about the dialogue between the administration, but also dialogue between the people in the European Parliament doing these things and and the people in US Congress. Complicated as these issues are because they are. We saw that in the TTIP negotiations. Yeah, among other things. Clearly it is an area where they, they should be taught. And perhaps this US EU tech council that they are now discussing setting up. I haven't heard anything lately, but today, Tony Blinken, Secretary of State is in Brussels and talking to both the Commission President and the high representative and others. And I would assume I would hope that this is one of the items on the agenda. I mean, what one of the things you've talked about Carl is the importance of the US EU cooperation due to share democratic values. We'll go back to those values again. Is there a role for other leading democracies like Japan or India in a partnership. Yes, yes, that definitely is. And I would put particular stress on India. Yeah, because India is, it's a large place. But in those terms, it's going to be the most populous nation in the world. It is a democracy. I mean, we can have our sort of doubts about certain of the policies that are undertaking at the moment, but it is basically a messy democracy as our messy democracies are. And it has a lot of tech potential. And I see them doing a lot of thinking along these lines. When I was working more concretely with the digital global digital issues. I had reason to spend quite some time in Delhi. I go there on the same issues now and then as a matter of fact heading there in a couple of weeks, because they think about these issues. I would say, sometimes they're in a swing position in the world. If we have a position where we sort of the classical of Western countries are up against China, then, and the battleground is the global south, then where India heads up is tremendously important. And from the technology point of view, of course, Japan and South Korea, South Korea is a country of high significance. And do we foster enough links with South Korea? You know, do you think we are slow to work with them? You know, more so than than other countries or has that begun to change? We have from the side, of course, we got a free trade agreement that's been working rather well. I don't think we have a digital trade provisions in those agreements and that that's one of the problems that I see coming up, by the way, that that's been a reluctance by Brussels to have sort of digital trade provisions in the trade agreements. For example, in the CPTP PS is called these days in the Pacific, they have it. But we don't have it in agreement with Japan, for example. So if we can get those particular provisions, those agreements, they would help. Then, I know I can say from the from from the Swedish side, of course, there has been quite a lot of technology cooperation, both with Japan and South Korea, Ericsson and Samsung are Samsung is much bigger, but in terms of mobile communication, they are in the same field and have a lot of working together as well. And just come back to China again and the kind of values issue. Do you think China's lack of adequate human rights and privacy protection gives us an edge against the or gives this an edge against the EU and the US in some sectors such as big data and AI. Or is that such a fundamental I mean Europe has put a lot of emphasis on, you know, ethics and AI, and to differentiate us from other and, in fact, saying that will give us the edge if we work around those issues. You know, what, what do you think. I'm not entirely convinced by that argument I hope the argument is correct, but I wouldn't be that certain that it is. They have an edge when it comes to sort of access to to data. Some people are telling me that it might not be that important as we think it is it's also the depth of the data that that is that is important. And if, if, if, if we sort of pursue our policies rightly, I would hope that we have the, and we do have on paper the free flow of non personal data inside the EU. And, and of course a lot of the development of AI is also on things that are not really dependent upon personal information over there. That's right. Yeah. Often mixed. But you've spent a bit of a little bit of time talking about GDP or and, and that is too cumbersome for, you know, small and medium size industries and any small group because effectively whether you're a big company or a small company. It's, it's applied. Do you think that is a real issue, or it because it seemed to have addressed that issue of privacy protection and the rights of the citizen. Do you know how, how do you think that can be addressed. I think it is an issue, an issue. I mean the, the, the basic motives the basic drive behind GDP and the basic trust is of course something that we can be proud of as Europeans. But one should be aware of the fact that sort of Facebook or wherever they can throw battalions of lawyers paid sillions of whatever currency they want to sort things out. And if you are sort of a smaller medium side company in Ireland or in Sweden. The cost of managing this can be very large. And I think we are still in a shake down cruise on it because I mean I when I when I talk to lawyers and say is this allowed or that allowed they said not yet cleared out not yet clear. We need to go to the courts and we need to sort out if that's allowed and all. And that cloud of uncertainty is difficult for smaller companies to handle. But I said Facebook can have battalions of lawyers on it, but, but others can't. And some of this will be sorted out by itself, I would assume. But there is a provision in the DDPR I think was a five year. After five years, there should be a review of it. That's right. And I hope that review is done, particularly with this, this consideration uppermost in the minds of those who do it. So one of the other issues you've talked about, you know, is funding and prioritizing funding. If you look at the, you know, the recovery 700 billion isn't that Europe is putting forward. Certainly looking at documents from the EU, you'd see there's a lot of emphasis, as you said on the green agenda but also on the digital agenda and merging the two. Do you think there will be a change, or, you know, in some ways when you read those you think there that there has been a revolution going on because the green agenda has been definitely addressed. But also there's a lot of emphasis on the digital agenda and enabling smaller meeting size companies and European companies to grow as you would want and innovate. Do you see a prospect now for the future with that with that that approach and with that funding. There's a lot of money I 20% of the money is allocated to issues that are associated the one way or the other with digital transformation that's going to be dependent upon, of course on the the the concrete programs that different governments put on the table of the commission to say that here's what we think we need to do with this money in order to do the digital transformation. It's going to be dependent upon exactly how they allocate the different national governments and allocate that particular money. If it's going to be possible to do basic research, I don't know if they do text breaks for for innovative companies doubtful. They can probably sort of subsidize the rollout of broadband for better or worse and and other things and training. I think training will be very important to sort of skill. The workforce is important to sort of quite a lot of things. I mean the three things I had sort of the basic research, the capital venture capital and the market size, whether that would be addressed by these 20% of all of these money is not entirely certain. What about the capital then do you think that that's that's always been an issue about venture capital. How can how can you address that issue. You know, is it by that partnership by facilitating that flow between the US and and EU. It's also taxation the different countries that that we would have a tax regime that is sufficiently sort of conducive to development of venture capital. Traditionally that has not been the case in Europe. It is a better now that it used to be but evidently more needs to be done. And then add to that. That's a tradition. I mean you need to develop this particular tradition. I mean it's much better than it was 20 years ago. But we are behind behind the US and the UK is significantly head of most European countries. So that we need to look at how we can do that so the capital is really available. If there are the ideas. There shouldn't be lack of capital and risk risk risk and capital, because money will follow the ideas and where the innovation is. I mean that's true, irrespective of where it is. But do you think that you raised it again on the, you know, the spectrum for 5G and various other things that are really a big issue is the internal differences in policy preference between EU member states. So that issue of integration. How is it about a political leadership to say this is what we need. This is where we're going and to bring all the member states together on a common purpose. Because otherwise those individual were all individual nation states make their, you know, make their own policies and that can create a major obstacle to a coherent common digital agenda. Yeah, and it's a good leadership, but I would say before leadership that has to be an awareness. And that is why I sort of put always putting an emphasis on sort of the, the fact that we are lagging behind. The more we become aware of the fact that we are lagging behind, the more that could lead to the policy leadership saying how do we catch up again. At the moment I'm exaggerating slightly for the sake of the argument. At the moment if you're like listening to Brussels they're saying, we are the regulatory superpower of the world we're going to regulate so this is going to be you mainly democratic AI or whatever. That's the focus. I'm not saying that it's wrong to do these things but I'm saying that is not what we should primarily be focusing on we should be aware of the fact that we are not, we can't regulate ourselves to the top of the world. We can only innovate ourselves to the top of the world. And we won't do the policy changes until there's an awareness of the dangers that are there for Europe in sleeping further and further behind in this particular race. As I said, that is 5G and mobile technologies is a good example we are. We are technology leadership, but when I talk to Ericsson, which is a word lead in terms of patent and technology in this particular area, spite of all with here by the way, 85% of their business is outside of Europe. Yeah. So there are the potential but we are not using it sufficiently in Europe so far. Yeah. Well, on that point, a question here from Leonard Hobbs, who's the director of search and innovation at Trinity College Dublin and Leonard asks, do you believe that the lack of semiconductor manufacturing of chips, which are the basic building blocks of the digital technology is a threat for Europe. Our capacity has been dropping for many years now and is well below the US and China. Not necessarily. I mean, if we have, if we have a functioning open global economy that should be a much of a problem. If you take the really high performance ships. And I would say that these are extremely complicated global value chains, and the priority should be to have them working as they are supposed to be. This didn't worry anyone a year ago. Yes, in a slightly different political environment in the starting to worry quite a lot of people. And, and I would say that these are extremely complicated global value chains, and the priority should be to have them working as they are supposed to work. The basic machines for doing these things are coming out of the Netherlands. But they are used in sort of Taiwan and South Korea because the scale is immense. You can't have very many of these factories in the world. Yeah. Yeah, I see that I bet on the European Commission for Industry and High Technology or whatever has now set as a name that 20% of the production of the high end ships should be in EU by 2030. Could be. Could be. Let's look at the cost of that. Another thing that you can do, of course, if you are worried is that you have, you have stocks, I mean, chips are fairly small things. So you can you can stock up on quite a number of them without renting too much space if you want to, in order to be sort of ahead of the posse in a sense there. Yeah, to be to be on the safe side if there any supply disruptions or whatever. But clearly, if there is the possibility to have production in ships in that sort of very long ships in Europe as well. It's critical. Yeah. Come back to 5G Dave Cron from my because asked, have we been right in the way we've turned away from how he and 5G, you know, in terms of that Chinese. Because it's a Chinese company that we have, we have not worked with them to successfully. The mobile communications industry is a strange one in the sense that they work together. And they develop the standards. The airsoft and Samsung and they were raised and whatever the Nokia's and agree on the standards. I mean, there's the technical working groups between those companies. We, if we go back in time remember, we didn't have a unified global standard for mobile communication. We had this sort of long time ago when you were, if you had a mobile telephone and went over the US, you had to sort of change the way in Japan had a system that completely different. No way that you could communicate. But then industry came together and said, let's do it. So there has been a fair amount of cooperation. And whether that can be continued or not remains to be seen. I think it would be now into that we do continue that cooperation that we have sort of a global functioning and that also gives of course market size. Yes. For innovation and for for industry. So just our final question out time is catching up on us. And it's on standards and it's from a leader. EU standards are widely recognized and adapted is standardizations one of the key EU key strengths and what role do standards play in creating partnership with USA, South Korea and others. True. Very important questions. In fact, Europe has been very successful in setting standards. You can say mobile communications is an example of that because it is the fact of the European standard that has become the global standard. Now, I think that three different standard setting organizations that are dominating in Europe. This is done through cooperation between industries. It's a fairly complicated ecosystem of standard setting that has been from the European point of view exceedingly successful. If you look back over the decades, what is happening now is that primarily the Chinese are investing a lot in setting standards. And that's perfectly legitimate. Nothing illegal or sort of offensive in its in itself in that I mean if you are an emerging economic power it's not entirely unnatural. But I think we are not sufficiently aware of the intensity of the Chinese efforts to now partly set down standards but partly also influence the global standard setting bodies. I've been following it primarily in the ITU, the International Telecommunications Union, where they also have been trying to advocate standards that sort of we have had reasons to take, take objections to because they sort of they were towards too much state control and things like that. But I think it is important that one is aware of the battle for standards in the world and that Europe speeds up that particular game we have been successful. But the Chinese are accelerating and in contrast to the European approach which I think has been the right one is a lot of industry is a lot of industry and technical stuff and technical these sorts of things in the Chinese it's it's it's the state that has a stronger role in it and whether we need to adjust our European approach remains to be seen I was as a matter of fact heading a small task force that was looking into that last year and making some recommendation. Well Carl unfortunately we come time as I say to the end of this event. And thank you so much. And you know what I think you have definitely achieved what you said is critical is about creating awareness about the issue of the difference what's happening with China the US and with Europe that we are lagging behind that we need to take a counter of that and start looking together and integrating that common goal and vision, and I think was an absolutely excellent presentation, and you've had certainly as I said alert us to the issue. So thank you very much for doing that really appreciated. And I'd like to thank our audience for all their questions for their participation, you can see from that Carl that they were very interested. And I think you've a lot of people here who are working on the issue, I think, of research and your, your point about the importance of finance. We're coming up to that stage where we need to see both on Ireland and Europe how much money we can, we can give there, and also that's something we've control about. I don't know in terms of tax maybe around venture capitals, but in market size, it is about that collaboration. And you mentioned earlier about collaboration, and that how the emerging technologies that's the way scientists work. That may be the way the future, and that will help address that need that that you so so well flagged. And I'd like to thank also our production team who got kept us going here. Thank you very much. And also to thank Sheamus Alan who's our policy digital researcher for all the work he did in preparation of this event. And as I said earlier, this is part this event is part of the project with Google, and it's established a network of tank tanks from other small economies in Europe and think some of them are from Sweden to examine the issue of digital sovereignty in Europe, as well as to produce publication and events. And we will be launching this network in the near future, and we get, there'll be more details on the IEA, and that's an example of different think tanks working together and addressing the issues that that you so well flagged. And we're coming. It's quite unbelievable. I think that we're coming near Easter now. So I'd like to take this opportunity to wish you a happy Easter and all our audience. I hope the Easter Bunny arrives in the garden next week. So thank you all very much for your attendance, but more particularly Carl, thank you for such an excellent presentation that got us all thinking and indeed working on what you would ask us to do. So thank you again and good evening. Thank you. Thank you. Next time in Dublin.