Melvin Farrugia

As part of the Presidency of the Council of the European Union, Malta has last week hosted the EU Digital Assembly 2017, through its collaboration with the European Commission. This important event, themed as “Digital Europe: Investing in the Future”, gave the opportunity to European stakeholders to share their views, discuss their ideas and consider how Europe and the rest of the world are preparing for the digital transformation. It was also the perfect setting to celebrate the end of roaming charges in all the European countries.

MITA was an active partner during the Digital Assembly. Not only it took care of the preparation and support of related IT infrastructure and systems, before and during the assembly, but it was also present in the Digital Expo where it exhibited various projects, namely the Mobile Government services; the projects undertaken by startups within the MITA Innovation Hub and a project through which MITA’s Data Centre could be visualised using Hololens technology.

The organisation of the Digital Assembly and of the Maltese Presidency were praised by important representatives of the European Commission. Amongst them, the Director General of the DG Connect at the European Commission, Roberto Viola who said that he loved to work with the Maltese people because they are resilient and never give up. He explained that during the last six months, Maltese people were so resilient that the delivery in the digital domain was so impressive. Mr Viola also said that he was hopeful that by next year there will be other important developments in the portability of content and geo-blocking.

The Vice-President of the European Commission, Andrus Anzip also had positive comments about the Maltese Presidency. He said that it will be difficult to repeat the success achieved by Malta during these six months. Apart from the abolishing of roaming charges, which was already a big achievement, Mr Anzip said that Malta worked hard on other issues like the portability of content, the 5G network and the Marakech Treaty which is particularly important for blind people. He remarked that the Maltese Presidency is not over yet and there might be other good news related to unjustified geo-blocking.

The Digital Assembly was inaugurated by the Honourable Prime Minister of Malta, Dr Joseph Muscat who described the abolishing of roaming charges as a great accomplishment. He explained that this project was particularly at his heart because when he was still a Member of