How can public administrations facilitate the development of transformative projects in the 21st century?

Transformative projects are part of the reality of the 21st century, and also part of luk hiar!‘s daily life. Digitalization, innovation and sustainability are here to stay and have become main features in every area. The European Commission is aware of this potential and has therefore decided to allocate a large amount of funds to these projects.

This decision has been made in a context of recovery, reconstruction and transformation after the Covid-19 crisis. It is thime to find new ways to modernize the Old Continent and get out of this situation. We are talking about the Next Generation EU initiative (https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/recovery-plan-europe_es).

What is Next Generation EU?

The European Commission will allocate 750,000 million euros to this program, of which 140,000 million (18.7%) will be assigned to Spain. This enormous amount of funds must invested exclusively in transformative projects of the countries in the EU, so they can help recover the economic and social activity in Europe, starting in 2021.

This includes sustainable projects aligned with the Green Deal, digital transformation and innovation projects, and projects aimed at both industrial competitiveness and the recovery of rural life. 

In short, the objective is to recover the economy in a solid way in the post-pandemic era, directing financial resources to transformational projects. These funds will undoubtedly provide a very important support to projects that are often frustrated by regulations and administrative obstacles of the public administrations. These administrations must align their regulations in favour of the objectives pursued by this unprecedented initiative in the European Union.

And what is the role of the public administrations in the implementation of these transformative projects?

There are currently many businesses and social projects with major objectives for 2030 or 2050. However, the public administrations have not yet adapted the current regulations to the reality, much less to the future. 

In the vast majority of municipalities in Spain today, there are laws and regulations from more than 20 years ago. These are absolutely outdated in relation to the technological revolution that we have experienced in all areas since the beginning of this century.

Society and technology were very different then, and the needs and services that citizens asked for have very little to do with what they demand today. Much less with what is to come in the next few years. This means that the regulatory framework must necessarily be updated to facilitate the implementation of transformative projects.

At luk hiar! we can talk from our own experience, because in more than one occasion, the implementation of innovative digital signage projects that are beneficial to cities has been frustrated because of regulatory barriers. In fact, in our road map, we have transformative projects in mind, perfectly aligned with the European Commission’s program. However, an imminent change in the current regulatory framework will be necessary for them to see the light.

This regulatory limitation affects many companies in the digital, audiovisual and communication areas. It is time to overcome these limits in order to attract investment in cities and, with it, achieve the creation and maintenance of many qualified jobs.

For this reason, we demand the necessary change in the municipal regulations and public administrations in Spain and in Europe, to promote the realization of transformative projects in line with Next Generation EU, starting in 2021.