How to implement the European digital single market: identifying the catalyst for digital transformation

ABSTRACT

COVID-19 is regarded as a major driver for digital transformation of our society and potentially as a boost for further digital single market integration. From the current perspective, pandemics cannot be avoided, but fully enabled digital societies will be better prepared to cope with them in future. This will, however, require reliable digital infrastructures to be put in place and further developed. Member States of the European Union and the European Commission have worked for more than 30 years to realise a European Digital Single Market. One key element in this development has been the so-called ‘Large-Scale Piloting’ (LSP) approach. This paper will focus on implementation of the ‘Once-Only Principle’ Pilot (TOOP) as part of LSP and the adjoint Single Digital Gateway Regulation (SDGR). This paper will examine whether, and how these initiatives can foster further integration into a digital single market.

KEYWORDS:

• Single digital gateway
• digital single market
• once-only principle
• large scale pilot

Acknowledgments

The work for this article was supported in part by ERASMUS + Jean Monnet Network VISTA, Project number 612044-EPP-1-2019-1-NL-EPPJMO-NETWORK, Grant Decision no. 2019-1609/001-001, as well as by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement nos. 857622 and 959072.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Annex 1. Overview of Large-Scale Pilot Projects 2008 - 2021

Table

Notes

1. STORK, PEPPOL, EPSOS, SPOCS, e-CODEX, e-SENS.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme [857622, 959072]; ERASMUS + Jean Monnet Network VISTA [Project number 612044-EPP-1-2019-1-NL-EPPJMO-NETWO].