Colao: "Europe is behind on Innovation. Starlink? Today we need it"

"Europe, understood as a continent and not only as the European Union, is behind. We all know it". Vittorio Colao , former Minister of Innovation in the Draghi government, speaks at the Festa del Foglio in Venice , interviewed by Stefano Cingolani. Colao refers to the innovation and competitiveness of our continent, compared to China and the United States who are running faster, "There is certainly a cultural issue, this approach to standardization, regulation and discussion. Just look at what happened on Artificial Intelligence", says the former minister. " But if I look at what happened after the Draghi report, Europe is moving. Maybe slowly, but it is moving". One example is the commitment to supercomputing, another is the attempt to simplify the rules on AI.

However, Colao adds, the small steps taken by Europe clash too much with the slowness of individual countries, "with the resistance of member states" in adopting certain measures: "This is becoming a problem". And it also concerns Italy, precisely on the subject of Artificial Intelligence. "At a time when Prime Minister Meloni rightly says that we must remove barriers, that is, European laws that complicate life, Italy proudly boasts of being the first country to have a law on AI". But if you look closely, here is the contradiction. "It is a law that is inconsistent with the European AI Act and also questionable when it says that professionals must not use AI, except in certain ways. In short, it adds new complexity", slowing down the potential of the tool and its applications. And in all this, "the opposition presents 400 amendments, to complicate things even more: therefore it is not a problem of right or left".

On Starlink, Elon Musk's satellites, the former minister says: "Do we need them? Today probably yes, we need low-altitude satellite constellations. If only for military applications. There is a European project that is going too slowly. We need to change the European space regulation rules", which make development very slow. "Only then can we try to really accelerate on Iris2" (the EU satellite project).

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