The conference “The Future of Digital Investments in the EU”, held in Aalborg on July 2–3, 2025, represented a key milestone in shaping Europe's strategic digital priorities under the Danish Presidency of the Council of the EU. Organised by the Danish Chamber of Commerce, this high-level event brought together a dynamic mix of voices from business, academia, and policymaking to explore how Europe can enhance its digital competitiveness and sovereignty in a rapidly changing geopolitical landscape.
Our sister project, DEP4ALL, was actively engaged in the conference and played a central role in several sessions, showcasing best practices highly relevant for projects like DEDEP. Highlights included:
- A joint session with IDEAL-IST, the international Horizon Europe Cluster 4 digital National Contact Point (NCP) network, organised by National Contact Points (NCPs) for Horizon Europe and Digital Europe, that looked at the practical side of creating synergies between these two funding programmes as well as with the Connecting Europe Facility. The European Data Spaces community was be used as an example to highlight how these synergies work in practice, what challenges organisations face when moving between different funding programmes and how projects from different funding programmes can work together more effectively
- Session on “Digital Europe Implementation in Practice”: co-organised with the European Commission, this session offered practical insights on navigating DEP calls, proposal preparation, and the use of support tools such as the DEP/IDEALIST Topic Tree.
It's possible to revisit the conference here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JX2tm6SSdI