EU: Critical Digital Capacities Deployment Beyond 2027

We contributed to the study "The EU's Critical Digital Capacities: Deployment Beyond 2027" as part of the robotics and physical AI expert group. The study was conducted by Technopolis Group for the European Commission's Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology (DG CNECT). It’s based on a Delphi survey, foresight workshops, and 14 focus groups of 15 to 25 technology experts each, alongside interviews across 13 critical digital technology areas, including robotics.

Related

• UNESCO: Science Report 8th Edition (2026)

• UN Global Digital Compact (GDC): AI Governance and Digital Infrastructure

• Contributing to the SAPEA: AI in Science and Research

Critical Digital Capacities Deployment Beyond 2027

The study is commissioned to inform the European Commission's preparation for the next Multiannual Financial Framework (2028–2034). It's aimed to assess where EU funding for digital capacity building, deployment, skills, and infrastructure is most critical across 13 technology areas, from AI, cloud, and cybersecurity to quantum, photonics, microelectronics, and robotics. In particular, it finds a strong European start-up base, with 20,720 advanced digital tech start-ups counted in 2025, but a persistent weakness in scaling: only 3.5 percent reached scale-up status and 0.2 percent became unicorns. Deployment of technologies such as AI, data analytics, cybersecurity, and cloud is already advancing. Areas including robotics, photonics, blockchain, and extended reality receive comparably less funding support, and remain more exposed to global competition. Experts participating in the study's Delphi exercise assessed the EU's expected global position by 2028.

The study identifies underinvestment, skills shortages, and market fragmentation as the central barriers to scaling deployment. These are compounded by high upfront costs, legacy IT systems, and diverging national rules across member states. It also flags strategic vulnerabilities from EU dependence on non-EU providers for cloud, semiconductors, and AI infrastructure. At the same time, it points to trusted regulation, data protection, interoperability, and open source as genuine EU strengths to build on. Our contribution focused specifically on the robotics and physical AI group. This covered multimodal models and sensors, hardware components and materials, energy-efficient architectures, testbeds, simulation environments, and standards and certifications. The study notes this area faces high dependency risk on non-EU suppliers, despite its cross-cutting relevance to healthcare, manufacturing, and public-service deployment. The findings will directly inform the Commission's design of investment options for the successor to the Digital Europe Programme.

References

¹ Technopolis Group. "Study on the EU's Critical Digital Capacities Deployment Beyond 2027." Final Report. European Commission, Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology (DG CNECT). Publications Office of the European Union. 2026.

² European Commission. "Boosting Tech Deployment Beyond 2027: New Study Highlights Digital Opportunities and Challenges for the EU." Digital Strategy. June 23, 2026.

³ Technopolis Group. "Annex 14 – Robotics." Study on the EU's Critical Digital Capacities Deployment Beyond 2027. European Commission. 2026.