Following a conversation with Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton, Netflix and Youtube took actions to reduce the pressure on Internet infrastructure. Networks could come under strain due to coronavirus social distancing measures, which are causing increased demands on connectivity. 

“Spain is the first European country to develop a broadband scheme for grey areas with a geographical scope covering all the nation” states Elena Galindo from Spain’s Ministry of Energy, Tourism and Digital Agenda, in this video. Ms Galindo, representing Spain’s national Broadband Competence Office, explains that the scheme is needed as approximately “8-10% of the population living in isolated rural and remote areas could not be covered with fast broadband”. It aims to cover 3.5 million people, of which 430,000 in grey areas, with minimum speeds of 300 Mbps symmetrical, upgradeable to 1 Gbps.

In rural Latvia, an EU-funded start-up is using digital connectivity to promote healthy bee colonies and modern hive management. Thanks to €15,000 in LEADER funding covering two thirds of the total budget, Jānis Kronbergs developed the BeeKing app, which aims to help beekeepers – and especially newcomers – to learn from others, implement best practices and become more efficient. In this video, he explains the tool as well as its motivation, saying that “bees are very important for our nature, for pollination and biodiversity” and digital technologies can help beekeepers stay competitive.

The targeted consultation ran from 11 February until 30 April 2021 and was addressed to a variety of stakeholders.

The Commission has released the European Innovation Scoreboard 2021, which shows that Europe's innovation performance continues to improve across the EU. On average, innovation performance has increased by 12.5% since 2014. There is continued convergence within the EU, with lower performing countries growing faster than higher performing ones, therefore closing the innovation gap among them.

The sixth issue of the European 5G Annual Journal has been released.

The Commission launched a consultation and a discussion forum in view of preparing the Digital Decade policy programme, building upon the Communication on the Digital targets for 2030.

This week the European Commission published a new report that takes stock of national strategies on Artificial Intelligence and provides suggestions for future developments.

The Web Accessibility Directive enters its last phase of implementation