Executive Summary

• Author: Petropoulos, Georgios; Marcus, J. Scott; Yeung, Timothy
• Pages: 8-15

IPOL | Policy Department for Economic, Scientific and Quality of Life Policies

8PE 631.044

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This study evaluatesthe benefits of aDigital Single Market for Europe, andquantifiesthe

Commission’s Digital Single Market (DSM) Strategy(2015)froman economic perspective. The

DSM Strategyseekstotackle a wide rangeofissues related to thedigitisation of European society,

butan over-arching theme isthefacilitation of cross-border electronic commercewithin the EU.Itis

broadly in linewith long-standing European Parliament initiatives to achieve a “… digital single

market that is essentially about removing national barriersto transactions that take place online.”1

We consider first the effects of the legislative measures that comprise the DSMStrategy,andthen

discusstheirrelationshipto the overall EU objecti ves ofcomple tion oftheSi ngle Mark etand of the

digitisation ofEuropean society.

Benefits of specific DSM S trategyinitiatives

Itis muchtoo soon to me asuretheactual economic benefitsof the DSMStrategyex post ;however,it

is possibl e to summarise the resultsthat the Commission anticipated.We have identified some € 177

billion inpotentialannualeconomicgains(in current euro)from full implementation of the

legislative measuresenacted or expected to be enacted, corresponding to 1.2%of current (2017)

GDP, based onCommission estimates.

Most of thes eanticipatedannualgainscanbe attrib uted totheEuropeanElec tronic Communicati ons

Code(the EECC) (€81billion), amendments to the Directive on re-use of p ublic s ector inform ation

(PSI) (€45 billion),theSingleDigital Gateway (assuming it is well implemented and wellused)

(€20bi lli on), and the Geo-B lock ing Regul ation ( €10 billion).The large benefits attributed to the EECC

reflect various spill-overs into the ove rall digiti sation of Europ ean soci ety,enabled by measurestha t

prom ote the deploy ment of fibr e-based fixed broadband a ndof5G mobile services. Rough estimates

oftheannualbe nefi ts achi evab le thanks to eac h legi slat ivemeasur e (in bi ll ions ofcurrent euroonce

the measures have taken fulleffect, andsubject t o arangeofli mitat ions) are summar isedin Figure 1

and Table1.

The estimates are, however, highly uncertainfor many different reasons. They are largely based on

Commission Impact Assessments and other publicly available documents, buttheImp act

Assessmentsarequitemixedinthe information and in the quality of analysis that they provide. We

havemade adjustments where we identified problems, but our figures necessarily reflect the

assumptions and anyerrors in the Commissi on estimates. Furthermore, it is much too earlytocheck

these forecast gains against actual gains. There isalso uncertainty as to the counterfactuals – in t he

absence of aDSMStrategyatEUlevel, what initiatives would the Member States have undertakento

prom ote the digitisation of society at Member State level, and toameliorate barriers to cross-border

e-commerce? Even where Commission Impact Assessment documents provide seeminglysensible

estimates, the re sults are not cross-comparabl e across diffe rent Im pact Assessments.

Further lim itat ions are note d in Chapt er1 of the text.

1 Europe an Par liame nt (2018a).