NOTICE TO MEMBERS. EN United in diversity EN. European Parliament (02/2018) Subject: Report on the IMCO Mission to Spain on 12-14/02/2018

Transcription

1 European Parliament Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection NOTICE TO MEMBERS (02/2018) Subject: Report on the IMCO Mission to Spain on 12-14/02/2018 Introduction From February took place the IMCO Mission to Madrid. Among the main topics of the mission was the Digital Single Market, as the current Spanish Government has put forward an ambitious agenda to accomplish the objectives of the DSM Strategy. With this purpose,, an intitutional meeting with the Parliamentary Committee for Energy, Tourism and the Digital Agenda of the Spanish Congress took place. In order to hear and have the point of view of the stakeholders, particularly SMEs and start-ups, an event with Spanish young entrepreneurs and start-ups took place at the offices of the European Parliament, where they provided input on how EU legislation is affecting them, and on the challenges and barriers still existing in the Internal Market. In the same field, another visit to Campus Google Madrid was made, a pioneer initiative operated by Google for the promotion of start-ups and entrepreneurs. Visits to the Central Offices of Distrito C (Campus headquarters of Telefonica) and of IBM Client Centre Madrid allowed MEPS to have input on last innovations in the Digital Economy and ICT Technologies, as well as insight on last developments and applications on the use of Data, Cybersecurity and Artificial Intelligence. Another key topic of the mission was Accessibility. The Accessibility Act, the ongoing implementation of the web accessibility directive as well as other Spanish initiatives to boost the market for accessible products and services were also analysed by the Delegation. To this purpose, a meeting with the Spanish Minister for Health, Social Services and Equality (responsible for accessibility and consumer protection) took place. Also on this topic, a visit was made to ONCE and its facilities of ILUNION Contact Center (a world example of special employment centre). Also, the Members of the Delegation held a meeting with the Secretary of State for European CM\ docx PE v00-03 United in diversity

2 Affairs, were they exchanged views on the main IMCO related initiatives and ongoing files and also on the impact of Brexit on the Internal Market. Finally, the President of the Region of Madrid received the IMCO Delegation in an institutional meeting, and exchanged views with MEPs on the opportunities offered by the Internal Market and the DSM to local companies, and on the promotion of EU policies and values by the Regions, among other topics. In Madrid, the delegation met: The Parliamentary Committee for Energy, Tourism and the Digital Agenda of the Spanish Congress. Representatives of different Spanish start-ups, associations and young entrepreneurs of the field of the digital economy (an event with them took place at the office of the European Parliament in Madrid). The Spanish Secretary of State for European Affairs. The Spanish Minister for Health, Social Services and Equality (responsible for accessibility and consumer protection). Representatives of ONCE and visit of its facilities of ILUNION Contact Center (a model of special employment centre). The President of the Region of Madrid. Representatives of Telefonica and visit to the Central Offices of Distrito C (Campus headquarters of Telefonica). Representatives of Google and visit of Campus Google Madrid was made, a pioneer initiative operated by Google for the promotion of start-ups and entrepreneurs. Representatives of IBM Europe and visit to IBM Client Center Madrid. The mission was led by Ms Evelyne GEBHARDT (S&D) as acting Chair of the Delegation until the early afternoon of Tuesday 13, and from then until the end of the mission by Mr António LÓPEZ-ISTÚRIZ WHITE (EPP) with the participation of Ms Inese VAIDERE (EPP), Ms Maria GRAPINI (S&D), and Mr Edward CZESAK (ECR). Monday, 12 February 2018 (Madrid) Summary report (1) The visit started on Monday afternoon with a meeting/event at the Office of the European Parliament in Madrid with Spanish Entrepreneurs, Start-ups and Associations in the field of the Digital Economy. Among the participants were representatives of: Ticketea (online ticket-selling platform for events organizers). Gudog (platform to enable contact between dogs and experienced dog-carers). Soy Super (APP providing price comparison of products from different supermarkets in real time). Wallapop (APP for online selling of second hand products). PE v /10 CM\ docx

3 Multidub (Startup that has developed an APP and technology to listen to audiovisual content in the language of choice, finalist best start-up on the World Mobile Congress). La Mejor Naranja (online selling of citricts from Valencia to Spain and across borders). Glovo (APP service food home centralizing services from different restaurants). Tetuan Valley (Association of Spanish start-ups). Asociación de Trabajadores Autónomos (Spanish Association of Autonomous Workers). Correos (global provider of physical and electronic comunications and parcel delivery solutions and company responsible for providing the Universal postal service in Spain). Asociación Española de Usuarios de Internet (Spanish Association of Internet Users). ADigital (Spanish association for the Digital economy, including both SMEs and big companies working to develop an economy based on the Internet). Emprendedores ( Entrepreneurs Spanish magazine focused on economy and finances). Agencia EFE (News agency, first in Spain and fourth in the world). The meeting was opened with a welcome speech by the Head of Office of EPIO in Madrid Ms María Andrés Marín, followed by opening remarks by Ms Evelyne Gebhardt and Mr Antonio Lopez-Istúriz White and the interventions of the MEPs. An exchange of views with the participants took place afterwards. Among the main topics raised and discussed were the challenges and opportunities for SMEs and Start-Ups in the Digital Single Market, the existing barriers to e-commerce and the digital economy within the EU, the important role of young entrepreneurs in the digital economy, how to launch innovation in the EU, guarantee consumer protection in the digital economy. Among the main barriers raised by the stakeholders were the problems of over-regulation in the field of data protection, privacy and copyright, the excess of bureaucracy and unnecessary administrative burdens for companies. Also the need for a more favourable and fair taxation regime that allow small companies to compete with big international companies, and the important of creating a proper legislative framework and business eco-system that allow EU companies to flourish. Members expressed their views on the different topics and took note of the input received by participants. (2) The delegation then visited the Spanish Congress (Congreso de los Diputados) and held a meeting with Members of the Committee on Energy, Tourism and Digital Agenda, among them were Mr Ricardo Sixto Iglesias (Committee Chair), Mr Eduardo Fernandez Garcia, (Committee Vice-Chair), and other Members of the Spanish Congress and political advisors representing the different political groups. The focus was on the Digital Single Market, and more particularly on the importance of providing Internet access for all, particularly in rural areas, the challenges and opportunities of the collaborative economy and Internet Platforms, cybersecurity, new opportunities for SMEs and consumers, and on increasing e-skills and raise awareness. Spanish MPs explained that there is a large consensus among all political groups to move forward in building a European Digital Single Market in the EU and to fully reap the opportunities provided in the field of the Digital Economy. The MEPs highlighted CM\ docx 3/10 PE v00-03

4 the importance of national and regional policies and their involvement when adopting EU legislation, in order to achieve the common goal of improving the current situation and fully reap the benefits of the Digital Economy in all the different fields. The issue of taxation and tax evasion in the digital economy by big Internet giants, and the need to make joint efforts between EU Institutions and Member States was also raised and discussed extensively. (3) The Delegation held afterwards a meeting with Mr Jorge Toledo Albiñana, Spanish Secretary of State for the European Union, and relevant Members of his Cabinet. A very constructive and fruitful exchange of views took place on current ongoing IMCO related legislative files. The Secretary of State and the Members of the Delegation expressed their views, priorities and concerns on key relevant issues of the main proposals and ongoing discussions in IMCO Committee, and on Parliament s position on files currently under trilogue negotiations. Particularly, in the field of services, on the e-card, notifications and proportionality test files, the Single Digital Gateway and other related Digital Single Market files, the Goods package or Brexit, among others. Tuesday, 13 February 2018 (Madrid) (4). The second day of the mission started at the headquarters of the Spanish Ministry of Health, where the Delegation exchanged views with Ms Dolores Montserrat, the Spanish Minister for Health, Social Services and Equality, and Members of her Cabinet and main related DGs of the Ministry on the topics of accessibility and consumer protection. The Minister explained to the Members of the Delegation the ambitious agenda implemented by the Spanish Government on accessibility. Since 2011 enormous efforts have been made to adapt to the needs of people with disabilities, a wide range of accessibility measures were adopted in many different fields, among them eliminating barriers in public spaces, adapting urban planning to their needs, providing better access to hospitals, schools, museums, airports, train stations, cultural and natural resources, creating high standards for transport, and providing big incentives to companies for hiring people with disabilities, and developing an ambitious policy of hiring people with disabilities in public administrations. As regards the educational field, important measures have been implemented to make schools, high-schools and universities fully accessible for persons with disabilities. The result of these policies is that more than a million people with disabilities have been hired in this period in Spain. The Emergency telephone 112, as well as audio-visual media services in public administrations have also been adapted to persons with disabilities. Also, the representatives of the Spanish Agency for Consumer Affairs, Food Safety and Nutrition exchanged views with MEPs and welcomed the Goods package and its measures to reinforce cooperation among the Member States and exchange of information. The agency also strongly supports giving more powers to the market surveillance authorities. (5) The mission continued with a visit to ONCE-ILUNION Contact Center The President of ILUNION, Mr Alberto Durán López gave an overview of the history of the Foundation. ONCE was founded in 1938 to raise funds and provides services for the blind people with serious visual impairment by selling charity lottery. Nowadays, ONCE has three pillars: 1)selling lottery and other gaming products which allow their funding of social services, employing more than workers (60% are people with disabilities); 2) the Foundation ONCE, established in 1988 to provide professional training and employment to eliminate PE v /10 CM\ docx

5 architectural, urban and communication barriers and promote "Digital Solidarity", web-based services for people with any disabilities; and 3) ILUNION, which brings the social initiatives of the foundation in the business by applying a pioneering and innovative approach that allows to maintain a balance between the profit and social values. They invest in the innovation and new technologies with a workforce of more than 31,000 people (32% of them with disabilities). The representatives of ONCE and ILUNION exchanged views with MEPs on the importance of the European Accessibility Act which should provide a minimum level of accessibility when it comes to products and services in all EU Member States. Adopting the Accessibility Act will be a step forward for the EU to promote the inclusion of 80 million persons with disabilities, in line with the UN Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities, which the EU and all Member States (with the exception of Ireland) have ratified. Since negotiations between the EP and the Council will start soon, the ONCE representatives expressed their concerns regarding the Council s position, especially on the degree to which the accessibility act should cover the emergency services, among other questions. A visit of the Contact Centre of ILUNION took place afterwards, where MEPs could see several examples of opportunities for employees with different disabilities working at their facilities. (6) The Delegation headed to the Real Casa de Correos at Puerta del Sol, headquarters of the Presidency of the Regional Government of Madrid, where the Members of the Delegation held an Institutional Meeting with the President of the Region of Madrid, Ms Cristina Cifuentes Cuencas, the Regional Minister for the Presidency and Justice, Mr Angel Garrido, and the Vice-Minister Ms Isabel Diaz Ayuso. An exchange of views took place on topics related to European Programmes developed by the Region of Madrid, the use of EU Funds in different projects, the promotion of the EU and the EU Policies and values by regional and local Governments, the cooperation among Institutions, accessibility, and the opportunities for Spanish SMEs in the Internal Market, among others. The President of the Region, Ms Cristina Cifuentes expressed the commitment of her Government to the European Project, and the EU Policies and values, and gave a very interesting overview on the main targets, actions and policies developed by her regional Government in key different areas. A very fruitful discussion and exchange with the Delegation took place on key legislative proposals and EU initiatives, especially on topics related to the creation of growth and employment, Innovation, and the Digital Single Market. (7) In the afternoon, the delegation visited the facilities of Distrito C, the Campus headquarters of Telefonica, the larger Spanish company. Telefonica recently created the strategic challenge of regrouping its fourteen thousand employees and different facilities in one and unique headquarters in Madrid. The buildings cover an area measuring 140,000 m2 and are joined by a canopy that boasts Europe's largest roof-based solar power plant. A meeting was held with high-level representatives of the company. Mr Carlos López Blanco, Global Head, Public and Regulatory Affairs, made a general presentation of the company, its main areas of activity, projects and initiatives in the EU and worldwide. Mr Carlos Rodriguez Cocina, Director for Corporate Regulation in Brussels, spoke and gave an overview on the company s views on the most relevant ongoing EU legislative initiatives. In the meeting also participated Ms Trinidad Jimenez, Director of Global Strategy for Public Affairs and former Spanish Minister of Health and Social Affairs. Among the main topics discussed was the European Electronic Communications Code and others related to platforms, the free flow of data and cybersecurity. The EU Telecoms is a very fragmented market, and therefore the EC CM\ docx 5/10 PE v00-03

6 proposal on telecoms is welcomed by Telefonica, but the company finds three main key elements: the lack of need from their view to further regulate the EU intra-calls; the fact that OTTs should be regulated under the telecoms framework (as they are not subject to the same rules as the traditional players, giving them an unfair competitive advantage. Also, the representatives of the company highlighted that the level playing field should be based on high consumers protection. Afterwards, the Delegation visited the Innovation Centre, where it could see demonstrations on the state of the art and most cutting-edge IT technologies and innovations for developing businesses and improving IT services and consumer satisfaction, particularly for the improvement of processes, citizens participation and customer experience, use of Big data, Artificial Intelligence, digital surveys and virtual reality, among other key tools. (8). Later the Delegation visited Campus Madrid, a pioneer initiative operated by Google for the promotion of Start-Ups and entrepreneurs, one of the six currently opened around the world. Each Campus joins the Google for Entrepreneurs global network of tech hubs, leading start-up communities, and resources and facilities for entrepreneurs to help them thrive and serve as a platform for knowledge exchange. It provides financial support and Google s resources to start-up communities across 125 countries. Since its opening in June 2015, Campus Madrid members number evolved to more than 38,000 members, 20% international and 38% women. The visit to the premises of Campus Madrid started at the cafeteria which is totally open and a free space for the entrepreneurial community: anyone who has registered in the Campus Madrid website can access. The Delegation also visited the Campus Auditorium, with a capacity for 180 people is always available free of charge for events related to the innovation and entrepreneurship, and opened to the entrepreneurial community. Anyone can request the space or be informed of the agenda events that hosts the Campus web Madrid. The third floor is a space directly managed by Google, and hosts the so called start-ups pre-incubators and accelerators managed by SeedRocket (first accelerator that was born in Spain for start-ups in an initial phase, with headquarters in Barcelona and Madrid) and Tetuán Valley (first non-profit pre-accelerator program in Europe that seeks to inspire entrepreneurs and push them with their ideas). (9) After the visit to the facilities, the Delegation held a meeting with several start-ups and associations that use the resources of Campus Google. Among the participants was Carmen Bermejo, President of the Spanish Startups Association, Laurence Fontinoy, founder of WOOM (example of startup that offers the technology applied to the fertility, which helps women increase their fertility with impressive results on the number of pregnancies), Alejandro Artacho, founder of Spotahome, Iñigo Juantegui, the founder of Ontruck, Gabriel Aldamiz, founder of Chicissimo and Daniel Sánchez, the founder of Influencity. The Delegation also discussed the GDPR regulation with local start-ups. The main problem faced by start-ups is dealing with the complexity of the EU regulations. More should be done to consult stakeholders before adopting new regulations. Start-ups don t have the resources to influence but they want to make their voice to be heard. Allied for start-ups network represents a good opportunity for them in the EU. Regarding the GDPR and eprivacy initiatives, start-ups feared that they do not have enough resources to comply with this complex regulation, while at the same time they understand that privacy is crucial when PE v /10 CM\ docx

7 dealing with very important sensitive data. The right to received back unprocessed data by the user was also criticized, as it imposes a huge burden to the start-ups and SMEs (as the inversion to make it effective will be huge compared with their limited budget and resources), whilst not adding up any advantage to the user as they are basically codes. It could force many companies to close business or move to Silicon Valley or other more innovativefriendly business environments. Members took note of their concerns and offered their views on the matter. Wednesday, 14 February 2018 (Madrid) (10) In the last day of the Mission the Delegation continued with a visit of IBM Client Center Madrid, a centre for innovation and business development where the latest business solutions are showed in a unique environment of collaboration and value creation. The Center is divided into six areas: Digital Transformation Lab, IBM Cloud, IBM Innovation Center, IBM Researcher for a Smarter Planet, IBM Systems and IBM Watson. Mr Juan ZUFIRIA, President of IBM Europe welcomed the Delegation and presented IBM general information. 97% of the world s largest banks and 80% of the world s travel reservations use IMB products. IBM deals with several technologies at the same time: data (structured and unstructured), cloud, and artificial intelligence (new technologies that are able to understand unstructured data). The Delegation raised three issues: data security; data privacy and digital education. New technologies are going to change the way we perceive jobs: some jobs will disappear but new jobs will be created. New technologies are raising new questions. There is a need for regulation, but regulators should find the right balance between the protection of privacy and innovation. A practical example was offered with the presentation of their IBM Watson Health for Oncology, a project that helps surface relevant data, bridge disparate sources of information, and identify treatments that are personalized to each unique patient drawing on more than 300 medical journals, more than 200 textbooks, and nearly 15 million pages of text to provide insights about different treatment options for cancer cases The reason for providing this example is linked to data mining and the importance of introducing an exception on data mining for commercial purposes. The cybersecurity issue is also a universal challenge. The number of unfulfilled cybersecurity jobs will raise up to 1.8 million by The key challenge is to understand the threats and to set up a good risk management framework. Regarding the Cybersecurity act, collaboration between key sectors (public and private) is even more important than increasing ISA s budget. Self-certification should be also taken into account when dealing with the certification framework. On the Internet of things (IoT) issue, information sharing is seen as the key for conversations between machines and humans. IoT is a completely different business model, and therefore more guidance and more regulation will be needed. CM\ docx 7/10 PE v00-03

8 The members of the IMCO Delegation at the Spanish Congress Annex Photos Meeting with the Committee for Energy, Tourism and the Digital Agenda of the Spanish Congress Meeting with the Committee for Energy, Tourism and the Digital Agenda of the Spanish Congress Meeting with Mr Jorge Toledo Albiñana, Spanish Secretary of State for the European Union Meeting with Ms Dolores Montserrat, Spanish Minister for Health, Social Services and Equality Meeting with representatives of ONCE and ILUNION PE v /10 CM\ docx

9 Visit of ILUNION Contact Center for people with disabilities Meeting with the President of the Region of Madrid, Ms Cristina Cifuentes Meeting with the President of the Region of Madrid and other representatives of the regional Government At Distrito C Telefonica At Campus Google Madrid At IBM Client Center Madrid CM\ docx 9/10 PE v00-03

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