30.12.2022
EN
Official Journal of the European Union
C 498/43
28. emphasises the role of local and regional schools, universities, research centres and local and regional ecosystems in taking part or even leading Digital Innovation Hubs, as these are often not coordinated by regional policies and thus extensive know-how and brain power is often wasted; in this context, measures to avoid brain drain must be put in place and decentralised working, under fair conditions, can be part of the solution, in particular for disadvantaged areas;
29. stresses that concerning SMEs, more needs to be done to support them in digitalising.
They lag behind larger companies with greater resources and a new skill-set needs to be developed.
The administrative burden to access EU funds (not only related to digital) for SMEs and in particular micro-enterprises must be significantly reduced.
The administrative requirements must be proportionate to the size of the company, while ensuring fair treatment of SME owners when receiving EU funds (12).
The European Commission should carry out an SME test for the current practices and put forward proposals to reduce the administrative burden especially for micro-enterprises (e.g. audit exemptions);
30. the allocation of Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) funds to digital initiatives and to SMEs in particular should be closely monitored, and it should be assessed if the amount of funding allocated to SMEs is proportionate to the SMEs’ contribution to national (and regional) GDPs;
E-government, digital resilience 31. is in favour of the European Commission promoting a more targeted awareness-raising campaign, addressing citizens, on the existing e-participation platforms at EU, national, regional and local level, through better coordination with Member States and local and regional authorities (LRAs) and an exchange of best-practices;
32. suggests that Member States devote specific resources to the rollout of public-private partnerships, awareness raising campaigns and training to prepare citizens, especially the younger generations, businesses and the public sector to face cybercrime as a horizontal issue of digital transformation.
The post-crisis support-funding programme should also include investments related to digital education, broadband connectivity, the acquisition of necessary equipment, as well as the training of teachers for such situations.
Content management within digital education should be properly reconsidered as well, taking into consideration the challenges and problems that could arise from using digital, online content;
33. suggests that the European Commission and the Member States address cross-national regulatory and interoperability barriers preventing the full implementation of the Digital Single Market and hindering the scaling-up of business and technologies in Europe.
In addition, LRAs shall facilitate the outlining of a common model through, for example, the Broadband Platform;
34. recommends that interoperability of regional and local public IT systems with those at national level should be a starting point for any digital initiative in particular where EU ICT standards, or common EU technical specifications already exist.
Interoperability should always be coupled with technology neutrality of solutions and services also to avoid vendor lock-in; in addition, an SME test should be carried out for any digital public service targeted at them; representatives of LRAs should be members of relevant committees at national level and be given advisory roles in key interoperability initiatives;
(12)
Declaration of direct personnel costs for SME owners who do not receive a salary and other natural persons who do not receive a salary are based on unit costs equivalent to a salary for researchers (https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/docs/ 2021.
2027/common/guidance/unit-cost-decision-sme-owners-natural-persons_en.pdf).