Hello and welcome everyone to this online conversation hosted by the European Center for

International Political Economy on leadership in European Digital Policy and the future

role and direction for the D9 Plus Group.

Launched in 2016, nine countries with a particular interest in matters of the digital economy

met to learn from each other and seek common ground on policy issues, the D9 Group.

Since its founding, the group has expanded into the D9 Plus

initiative and now also includes guest countries, but it remains fundamentally an initiative

of small and mid-sized, open-oriented economies with a strong interest to exploit the economic power

of digitalization and new emerging technologies.

In a recent E-Sai publication titled Leadership in European Digital Policy,

Future role and Direction for the D9 Plus Group,

we argue that D9 plus countries have a lot in common,

digital and general economic characteristics that should prompt them to be far more ambitious in promoting Europe's digital competitiveness.

My name is Philip Blamprecht, and today I'm very pleased to welcome Miguel Otero Iglesias to this conversation.

Miguel is a senior analyst at the Elcano Royal Institute and professor at IE School of Global

and Public Affairs.

He is also research associate at the EU Asia Institute at the ESSCA School of Management

in France.

Hello, Philip.

Great to be here.

And congratulations as well for your report. Very interesting and thought-provoking.

Thank you very much, Miguel. Now, to start off with first general question,

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