The Contested Domain of Digital Infrastructure
The Institute for Foreign Affairs and Trade (IFAT) hosted an online roundtable discussion entitled “The Contested Domain of Digital Infrastructure” on June 15, 2022 as the last part of a series of discussions on “The Front Lines of Global Tech War”. The event was moderated by Tibor Mezei, IFAT Research Fellow. The participating experts were EU Programme Analyst, Marta Makowska from the Polish Institute of International Affairs, and Head of Research Group and Ágnes Szunomár from the Economic and Regional Research Centre at the Institute for World Economy. The significance of digital infrastructure in general, the situation in the Visegrad countries regarding digital infrastructure, the plans for digitalization is the EU, and China’s Digital Silk Road, and the political concerns related to building digital infrastructure were the main topics discussed in the roundtable.
Both experts emphasized that in our times digitalization is indispensable for ensuring economic growth, and building proper digital infrastructure is a precondition for that. As for our region, the Visegrad countries, digital infrastructure still needs to be developed. An overview of the situation in Europe demonstrates that Western Europe is the most developed, then come the Baltic states, followed by the V4 states, and the Western Balkan are the least developed in digital infrastructure. It is an important question how the Visegrad countries will solve the problem of developing their infrastructure.
Marta Makowska spoke about the EU Digital Compass, announced in 2021, which sets out the European plans for promoting digitalization in the EU. She pointed out that the establishment of 5G network is the most important element of infrastructure development, and the aim is to set up a 5G network across the entire EU by 2030. Ágnes Szunomár stated that the Digital Silk Road – which is part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative – also offers opportunities for developing digital infrastructure, and in this case the 5G network is provided by Huawei Technologies Co. She emphasized that the development of digital infrastructure is not regarded as a purely economic issue in Europe since there are political as well as security concerns in relation to it. Some European countries are reluctant to have Huawei provide 5G network for them because they are concerned about becoming overdependent on China and about the risk of espionage.
Marta Makowska added that, as a byproduct of the US-China trade war, there is pressure form the US government on the EU not to cooperate with Chinese companies in general, and not to bring in Huawei into digital infrastructure development. She noted that, at the moment, American tech companies – though they provide certain services to European countries – cannot be regarded as potential competitors for building digital infrastructure in the European Union.
The main question about who will provide proper digital infrastructure for the Visegrad countries remains open, but both experts agreed that cooperation between European and Chinese tech companies on this field can be precluded due to political considerations for the time being.
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