Nicosia, Cyprus. Europe must move beyond regulating technologies developed elsewhere and become a builder, deployer and scaler of critical technologies, Deputy Minister of Research, Innovation and Digital Policy Nicodemos Damianou said on Tuesday at a digital conference in Nicosia.
Call for a broader European technology role
Speaking at the opening of the ‘Shaping the Next Digital Frontier’ conference, organised in the context of the Cyprus Presidency of the Council of the European Union, Damianou said Europe could no longer afford to rely on technologies developed abroad.
He said Europe needed to compete on innovation, investment, speed and scale, adding that it could not remain only a regulator of technologies developed elsewhere.
Technology as a strategic factor
Damianou said technology had become a decisive factor in geopolitical influence, economic resilience and strategic relevance.
He said artificial intelligence was rapidly moving from experimentation to widespread deployment.
Infrastructure and cybersecurity
He said cloud and data infrastructure had become strategic assets, while connectivity was essential for growth and social inclusion.
Damianou added that space technologies had developed into critical infrastructure supporting digital services, climate monitoring, navigation and defence.
He also said cybersecurity was the foundation of trust supporting all of these capabilities.
Growing global competition
According to Damianou, global competition in artificial intelligence, semiconductors, quantum technologies, cloud computing and space was intensifying.
He said governments and major international players were investing heavily in infrastructure, computing capacity, talent and industrial ecosystems.
European strengths
Damianou said Europe should lead on trust while competing on innovation, investment, speed and scale.
He also said Europe already had world-class scientific excellence, citing European Commission data showing that the continent had a 30 per cent higher per capita concentration of AI researchers than the United States.
