Over €760 million investment from the Digital Europe Programme for Europe’s digital transition and cybersecurity

The European Commission has adopted the amendment of the Digital Europe Programme Work Programmes 2023-2024

The Commission has adopted the amended work programmes for 2024 for the Digital Europe Programme, (DEP) outlining the objectives and specific topic areas that will receive a total of €762.7 million in funding. These work programmes include strategic investments that will be instrumental in making this Europe's Digital Decade. The Digital Europe Programme aims to bolster Europe's technological sovereignty and bring digital solutions to market for the benefit of citizens, public administrations, and businesses while contributing to the objectives of the European Green Deal.

Main Work Programme

The main Work Programme is worth nearly €549 million for 2024. Over half of this will go towards ensuring the continuation and evolution of activities that started under previous work programmes and those actions already launched by the 2023-2024 Work programme published in March. The main WP covers specific deployment projects that use digital technologies such as supercomputers, data, AI, cloud, cybersecurity, and advanced digital skills,

Another 40% of the 2024 Work Programme’s funding will provide concrete support for the smooth implementation of Digital Decade multi-county projects including opportunities for European Digital Infrastructure Consortia (EDICs), strengthened efforts on AI, and additional actions related to key digital policies such as virtual worlds, cloud, and quantum.

Within the framework of the Digital Decade, multi-country projects are large-scale projects that can contribute to achieving the digital decade targets. They will allow Member States to come together and pool resources to build digital capacities that they would not be able to develop on their own. To set-up a multi-country project where there is no other legal instrument, the policy programme foresees a new legal structure, the European Digital Infrastructure Consortium (EDIC) which will enable swift and flexible implementation.

Following a very successful Call for Expression of Interest for EDICs, Member States have submitted 38 proposals, thus demonstrating strong demand for this new instrument. The Digital Europe Programme will support a selected number of the proposed consortia, with a particular focus on industry-oriented projects.

Recognising the growing importance of artificial intelligence (AI), the 2024 work programme devotes one fifth of its funding to strengthening AI support. This includes actions building an ecosystem around large language and AI models in Europe, providing support for the implementation and compliance with the AI Act, funding the Virtual Human Twin Platform, promoting AI innovation in healthcare, and continuing to fund projects like Destination Earth.

The 2024 programme also introduces new actions in key digital policy areas. These include seed funding for a pilot demonstrating seamless integration and interoperability of Industrial IoT Edge with Telco Edge developments, the establishment of a 3D Competence Centre for the Cultural Heritagesector, and the provision of quantum-based metabolic MRI sensors for cancer diagnosis and treatment.

Cybersecurity Work Programme

Alongside the amended main work programme, the Commission published the amendment of the specific work programme focusing on cybersecurity, with a budget of €214 million for 2024 and will aim to support notably cyber threat detection and sharing, implementation of cybersecurity EU legislation, emergency preparedness for cyber attacks and mutual assistance, national coordination centres.

Funding will be made available for the effective implementation of cybersecurity EU legislation, including the NIS2 Directive and the Cyber Resilience Act, with special focus on supporting small and medium-sized enterprises.

The Emergency Mechanism will include preparedness and mutual assistance actions funded by the cybersecurity DEP work program, next to incident response actions funded by the main DEP work program.

To foster collaboration and strengthen the Cybersecurity Competence Community within each Member State, the cyber DEP Work Program will provide support for existing or new National Coordination Centres. These centres act as contact points, interacting with and assisting stakeholders, and contributing to the strategic tasks of the European Cybersecurity Competence Centre (ECCC).

Digital Europe Programme Calls

The work programmes will be executed mainly through grants and procurements. A few actions, such as Destination Earth initiative will be carried out with partner organisations. The investment that the calls from the work programmes will generate will be almost double the amount from EU funding, as projects are co-funded at a rate of 50%.

The first calls for this work programme of the Digital Europe Programme were already published in 2023 and the next ones will be published in early 2024, with more to come in spring. The calls are open to businesses, public administrations, and other entities from the EU Member States, EFTA/EEA countries, and countries associated to the Digital Europe Programme. For more information on the Work Programmes, please see here. To get more information on how to get funding, please see here.

Background

The Digital Europe Programme is the first funding programme of the EU focused on bringing digital technology to businesses and citizens. With a planned total budget of €7.5 billion over 7 years, it will accelerate the economic recovery and shape the digital transformation of Europe's society and economy, bringing benefits in particular to small and medium-sized businesses. The Digital Europe Programme is implemented by multiannual work programmes.

The Digital Europe Programme complements investments under other EU programmes, such as the Horizon Europe, EU4Health, InvestEU, the Connecting Europe Facility, as well as investments under the Recovery and Resilience Facility. The Regulation establishing the Digital Europe Programme was published in the Official Journal of the EU on 11 May 2021, entered into force on the same day, and has applied retroactively since 1 January 2021.