According to eco – Association of the Internet Industry, the exploratory talks for a Jamaica coalition that were declared unsuccessful on Monday night could intensify the phase of uncertainty for the Internet industry, and thus have a negative effect on Germany as a digital location. Despite unsuccessful exploratory talks, Oliver Süme, eco Director for Policy & Law, calls for a coherent concept for the digitalization of society and the economy. “Politicians should not lose even more valuable time required for the organizational tasks facing the next government. Germany is seriously lagging behind in terms of, among other things, broadband expansion, eGovernment, and digital education. The rest of the world isn’t waiting for us – at other business locations, the digitalization process continues to expand, and here we have a standstill.” This is highly problematic for Germany as a digital location, mainly because of the rapid innovation cycles that tend to shape many digital topics. At the same time, there are very specific questions about Internet policy that require urgent clarification: “We have many open questions regarding fundamental changes in the field of Internet policy, such as blanket data retention, the Act for the Improvement of Law Enforcement in Social Networks, or the Lawful Interception at the Source (Quellen-TKÜ). Here we need clarity and planning certainty as quickly as possible,” continues Süme.
However, the published intermediate outcomes of the exploratory talks were not very promising. “It was obvious how different the expectations were with regard to Internet policy, and that there was no common vision for the necessary development of a digital transformation of society and the economy. Even the lowest common denominator, i.e. a basic roadmap for the digitalization of Germany, was only vaguely formulated and poorly catered for in terms of finance. The responsibilities and the digital competencies in the prospective federal government also remained unclear, although a digital ministry could have effectively addressed the innovation bottlenecks in Internet policy. As such, a viable and reliable forward-looking digital policy could hardly have been expected,” says Süme.
For Germany as a digital location, it is now imperative that a government with authority to act is formed as quickly as possible and that the unresolved logistics within Internet policy are tackled with a coherent and visionary overall concept.
eco has formulated a 5-point paper setting out the most urgent Internet policy tasks for the new legislative term from the perspective of the Internet industry. You can find the paper online here.
