EU leaders agree to promote digital single market strategy

The European Union (EU) leaders on Friday agreed to take multiple measures to promote the development of the digital single market strategy proposed by the European Commission.

The EU leaders said in the statement after the summit that as digital technologies brought immense opportunities for innovation, growth and jobs, the EU "need to tackle market fragmentation, ensure future-proof regulation, build supporting infrastructure, help the digitization of industry, create conditions to facilitate growth in all sectors and protect our citizens."

They vowed to rapidly adopt the telecommunications single market regulation, including roaming, and the directive on network and information security.

Moreover, they pledged that the data protection package must be adopted by the end of this year.

Multiple actions should also be taken, said the EU leaders, including removing the remaining barriers to the free circulation of goods and services sold online, guaranteeing the portability and facilitating cross-border access to online material protected by copyright.

The European Commission adopted its digital single market strategy in early May, with detailed plans to create a single market for the digital economy, indicating that a fully functional digital single market could contribute 415 billion euros (463 billion U.S. dollars) per year to the EU economy and create hundreds of thousands of new jobs.