Calviño points to an autumn marked in digital by the 'startup law' and the digital skills plan

MADRID, 6 Jul. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The First Vice President and Minister of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation, Nadia Calviño, assured this Wednesday at the opening of the 'Summit2022 DigitalEs' that the next political year that begins in the fall will be marked digitally by the digital skills plan and the approval of the 'startup law'.

Calviño has joked about how he insists on his team to launch the major programs within the digital skills plan, included in the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan with a 3,000 million euro endowment.

The First Vice President considers this element "absolutely fundamental" given the number of vacancies in the technology sector and the need for the population in general and especially the most vulnerable groups to obtain the necessary skills to adapt to the digital world.

The minister has also described the actions that the Government has carried out in recent years and has expressed her hope that the triennium 2022, 2023 and 2024 will be remembered as the years in which Spain definitively faced its digital transformation.

Calviño highlighted that, as a result of the pandemic, investment in digitization has multiplied by nine, as well as the reforms approved, including the 5G cybersecurity law, the telecommunications law and the audiovisual law which, together with laws such as 'the law of startup' or the 'law creates and grows' generates, in his opinion, one of the most modern legal frameworks in the Spanish environment.

Along the same lines, it has celebrated that more than 18,000 SMEs have already received the first vouchers of the Digital Kit and the reception of the first call for the segment of between 10 and 50 workers, with 500 million euros of endowment.

Calviño has also referred to the new ReTech network that will serve to finance and articulate technological projects with the autonomous communities.

The 'Summit 2022 of DigitalEs', which will last until Friday, has also had the mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez Almeida, at its opening.

This has highlighted the role of digital hub in southern Europe that the city has assumed in recent years, where investments in data centers and startups have multiplied.

Also, the mayor of the capital has stressed the importance of the event taking into account young people to hear first-hand their problems and possible solutions to them.

In addition, he has underlined the "qualitative and exponential" leap that European funds can entail and the growing role that large cities have when executing innovation policies.

For his part, the president of DigitalEs, Eduardo Serra, has emphasized the lack of digital talent to cover more than 140,000 jobs.

For Serra, a closer relationship between business and university is necessary, which is why the event, held at the Madrid headquarters of the University of Navarra, is focused on giving young people a voice.

Likewise, the president of the telecommunications employers' association has called for improving the regulatory environment to facilitate innovation in the business world.

Both he and Calviño have urged to overcome the new crisis unleashed by the invasion of Ukraine and to look to the future with optimism, due to the capacity of young Spaniards and companies.

The president of Telefónica, Emilio Gayo, has been the first manager to take part in one of these dialogues with students in which he has answered questions recorded by six young people about fields such as connectivity, cybersecurity or sustainability.

Gayo pointed out that the pandemic has made it possible to "visualize" the importance of having good connectivity and has highlighted the strategic role of sustainability for any company that looks to the future.

Likewise, he was surprised to receive a question about whether large companies can be seen as a brake on innovation, given the open innovation initiatives launched by Telefónica with Wayra among them.

"The reflection is that we will not be doing something quite right if they continue to see us as brakes on innovation, we will have to do much more explaining," he stressed.

Gayo has highlighted the vital role of startups for Telefónica and the need to attract them to develop innovation and the technological ecosystem.