EU building a Digital Community with Georgia

Georgia and other eastern partner countries of the European Union (EU) are discussing ways to collaborate on digital issues to bring economic growth, generate jobs, improve people’s lives and help businesses.

This week a ministerial meeting on the Digital Community was held in Brussels, Belgium where EU envoys met Ministers in charge of the Digital Economy and Society from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine.

The Digital Community will open new opportunities for citizens and business on both sides through improved digital governance, better connectivity with and across the region, and intensified people to people contacts,” said Johannes Hahn, Commissioner for the European Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations.

To give a concrete example, we now have a commitment to work towards a harmonised framework for e-commerce, which will allow online and protected access to goods for consumers across the Eastern Partnership,” he added.

The main goal of the meeting was to discuss ways to collaborate digital issues, in particular the EU4Digital regional networks initiative.

Once in place the Digital Community will deepen cooperation between the EU and its eastern European partners in the digital economy. It aimed to deliver the benefits of the Digital Single Market (DSM) to the EU's neighbouring countries.

The 72 million consumers of the eastern European partners are also stakeholders in the success of the Digital Single Market. I am convinced that our common vision of a Digital Community and our common commitment to invest in the digital economy and society will result in significant mutual benefits and bring our citizens and businesses closer to each other,” said Commissioner for the Digital Economy and Society Gunther Oettinger.