International Digital Strategy for Europe: Financial Implications

The EIB is a publicly owned international financial institution and its shareholders are the EU member states with a lending volume of €89bn in 2024 it is also the world’s largest international public lending institution. It provides financing under well-defined policy goals, including innovation and digital transformation, SMEs, environment and infrastructure.

Objective:

With the recent publication of the International Digital Strategy for the European Union the European Commission has finally set an international framework to its policy concerning the digital sector and infrastructure. This provides for the first time a basis for projecting European policy aims to the international environment which is increasingly contended by government and non-government actors. Investment will be crucially affected by this, with strong implications for infrastructure with international connections (e.g. submarine cables) or network components (e.g. 5G). Non-tariff and tariff measures will affect the supply infrastructure for equipment. Policies concerning strategic independence will play a major role. On the basis of examples the workshop will further explore on what is to be expected on the normative side for digital security compliance, with implications for financing

Workshop Host

Dr Harald Gruber is Senior Digital Advisor at the Projects Directorate of the European Investment Bank based in Luxembourg. He advises on the Bank’s business strategy with respect to financing of digital infrastructure, digital tansformation and innovation policy. He is on the editorial board of several journals in the sector and has a publication track record with books and articles in journals. He has been also professor at Bocconi University (Milan) for telecommunications economics. Harald Gruber holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the LSE.