Technique. The European digital economy continues to lag behind.

The 27 EU countries that depend on foreign countries as well as the digital economy are rarely found in any other region. A study confirms this. Researchers recommend maintaining realism when catching up.

European Union countries are lagging more and more behind China, South Korea and the United States in the digital economy. This is the central finding of a study conducted by two researchers at the University of Bonn on behalf of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation.

The diagnosis contradicts the statements of the European Union Commission. “The planned digital contract will not put Europe in a position to compete for digital leadership at the global level,” says the study, published in Berlin on Tuesday.

Researchers Maximilian Mayer and Yen-Chi Lu developed a “Digital Dependence Index” (DDI) for their analysis, which shows the relationship between domestic demand and external supply of digital technologies.

No region in the world achieves the ideal value between 0 and 0.25. The US is the only leading economy with a DDI just below 0.5. This scale means that the local display provides the majority of digital technologies.

This puts the United States of America in the best position when it comes to trade in digital goods and services, in the field of information and communications infrastructure and in intellectual property rights for digital technologies.

In the study, China comes in second with a DDI of 0.58, South Korea is third with 0.66, and Germany and other EU countries cross the 0.75 threshold, indicating significant weakness in the digital economy.

In this context, the authors raise the question of whether large-scale EU projects such as the Gaia-X cloud initiative are the right choice to become the flagship of ambitions in terms of technological independence.

How far Europe lags behind can also be seen by the number of patents granted in the context of the digital economy. “US, Chinese and South Korean companies are registering more and more ICT-related patents,” the study says.

SD