Why is it relevant to tourism?
The Digital Europe work programme, which runs from 2021 to 2022, shapes and supports the digital transformation of Europe’s society and economy. Its ultimate goal is to support the strategic autonomy of the EU single market.
The Digital Europe programme reinforces EU-critical digital capacities by focusing on the key areas of artificial intelligence (AI), cybersecurity, advanced computing, data infrastructure, and governance and processing, as well as their deployment and best use in critical sectors like energy and environment, manufacturing, agriculture and health. The programme provides strategic support for the digital transformation of the EU industrial ecosystems.
Multi-annual work programmes help implement Digital Europe. There are four independent work programmes. Two cover parts under indirect management (high-performance computing and cybersecurity). One focuses on the European digital innovation hubs. Finally, one programme pertains to data, AI, cloud, Euro quantum communication infrastructure (QCI) and skills, in addition to all deployment actions. Digital Europe will ensure that activities within the various programmes synergise and complement each other.
Budget allocation
The work programme distributes its €1.38 billion budget (in current prices) by allocating
- €410 million to support the deployment of common data spaces (including sectorial data spaces) and support for cloud-to-edge infrastructure and services
- €139 million to implement the AI work-strand, including the sectorial testing and experimentation facilities
- €170 million to deploy a secure quantum communication infrastructure (QCI) for the EU
- €166 million for advanced digital skills in key capacity areas through specialised education programmes and more under specific objective 4 (upskilling, short-term training, educational innovation)
- €155 million to support the Destination Earth initiative, including the core platform data lake, related digital twins, as well as other preparatory actions supporting green deal objectives
- €38 million to deploy the European blockchain services infrastructure and its regulatory sandbox
- €186.15 million to implement, maintain and operate the European digital government ecosystem (EDGES) to support public administrations and their cross-border interoperability, an EU-wide digital identity, as well as support public services providers (i.e. judiciary and consumer protection, health and security)
- €40.5 million to enhance confidence in the digital transformation
- €38 million for an investment platform for strategic digital technologies
- €40.2 million for programme support actions, including evaluations and reviews
Most of the programme’s activities require co-investments from the public and private sectors. The relevant work programmes describe the related modes of these co-investments. The EU recovery and resilience facility (RRF), along with contributions from several programmes at EU, national and regional levels, foresees several of these activities as significant parts of cross-border or multi-country projects (MCP). As such, co-investments from the RRF can contribute to implementing these projects.
Overview of tourism-related components
This programme supports the creation of data spaces, with three projects particularly interesting for the tourism sector.
- A coordination and support action explores the governance of a future data space for tourism, with a call for proposals running from November 17, 2021, to February 22, 2022.
- The European common data space for cultural heritagesupports the digital transformation of Europe’s cultural heritage sector.
- The data space for mobility is key to tourism. So is interoperability: the data space for tourism needs to be interoperable with the one for mobility, the one for cultural heritage, and others which may be developed in the future.
Moreover, SMEs active in the tourism sector can benefit from the services provided by the network of European digital innovation hubs to support them in their digital transformation.
Details of the programme
- General information: Digital Programme | Shaping Europe’s digital future (europa.eu)
- Digital Europe on Funding & tender opportunities
- Find call for proposals (europa.eu)
- Regulation establishing the Digital Europe Programme
Example(s) of supported projects
Not yet available
Database of examples
Not yet available