Polish Presidency of the Visegrad Group

Establishing the Virtual Office for V4 Digital Projects is a Polish initiative under our V4 Presidency. It was signalled in February this year by signing by the prime ministers of the Visegrad Group the – Digital Declaration, a declaration of joint cooperation on digital projects.

Hand in hand

In accordance with the Digital Declaration, V4 countries undertook to establish the framework for cooperation in digital matters, through, among others, setting up a consultation mechanism and designating contact points for digital matters. Their task is the ongoing coordination of joint V4 digital projects, consisting in, for instance – creating new products, business models, investments or research in the area of digital transformation.

• Each of the Prime Ministers of the Visegrad Group has appointed a national coordinator of joint V4 digital projects, thus establishing a Virtual Office for V4 Digital Projects:The Czech Republic- Petr Očko, Deputy Minister for new technologies,
• Slovakia – Radoslav Repa, Director General Office of the Deputy Prime Minister for Investment and Informatisation,
• Hungary – Károly Balázs Solymár, Deputy Minister of Digitalisation,
• Poland – Krzysztof Szubert, High Representative of the Prime Minister for European Digital Policy.

The first meeting of the Virtual Office was headed by Minister Krzysztof Szubert, and the agenda focused mainly on identifying the areas of cooperation between the Visegrad Group countries and the possibility to commence regional processes aiming to accelerate the digital transformation processes of V4 countries.

– Our role is to transform the political directions defined by V4 leaders into specific digital projects. The key issue is going to involve establishing closer cooperation with business, scientific and financial partners, who are going to become the actual executors of these projects – said Krzysztof Szubert, High Representative of the Prime Minister for European Digital Policy and coordinator of V4 digital cooperation on behalf of Poland.

Areas of cooperation

The Czech coordinator underlined that digital agenda has a new importance in pandemic and post-pandemic times, in particular within the context of the digitalisation of public administration.

The Czech Republic is a highly industrialised country, which is why it pays particular attention to programmes aiming to digitise small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and to develop Digital Innovation Hubs (DIH). The Czech Deputy Minister for new technologies also indicated the possible digital sectors of cooperation of the Visegrad Group - regulations with respect to AI, HPC (high-performance computers), establishing 5G corridors.

The Hungarian Deputy Minister agreed with his colleague and added that Data Economy is the priority for Hungary, and that it may also become an area for creating joint projects.

The representatives of Hungary and Slovakia see the potential for cooperation also in intercollegiate research and development projects, also in non-regional dimension. The representative of Slovakia also pointed towards cloud-based technologies and the broadly understood acquisition of competences as important sectors.

All participants of the meetings have reacted very positively to the Polish initiative and outlined a number of common areas for cooperation. Based on the discussion, Poland undertook to prepare initial drafts for projects with respect to digital transformation of V4 countries, taking into consideration the conclusions and propositions reported by all participants of the meeting.

Minister Krzysztof Szubert also encouraged V4 partners to make a review of the national recovery programmes and to establish contacts with the local business environment. He also invited them to participate in the 16th edition of the UN Internet Governance Forum, which is going to be held in Katowice this year (December 6th-10th).