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The Digital Europe Programme complements the research and innovation activities under Horizon Europe
and its predecessors: results from Horizon Europe, in particular under Cluster 4 ”Digital, industry and space”,
and Horizon 2020 can receive the necessary help from Digital Europe to go to market, thereby filling an
important gap of upscaling innovation. Furthermore, these AI activities will also provide significant support
to the ‘ecosystem of trust’
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, in particular contributing to the development of certification schemes and
providing regulatory sandboxes
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.
Sectorial AI Testing and Experimentation Facilities (TEFs) will be set up for the purpose of testing and
validating advanced AI solutions and products to be deployed widely after such validation. This testing
necessarily involves access to high quality data, which, for certain TEF users or TEFs scenarios, are critical for
the EU’s security and public order. Examples of such data are: i) data about use of energy supply
infrastructure (TEF on Smart cities and communities), which can reveal sensitive the critical infrastructure for
energy supply, including its points of failure, hence essential for the Union’s security, ii) EU’s aerospace
industry (e.g. TEF on manufacturing is open to any industry), potentially revealing important data about the
EU’s aerospace projects, iii) European industrial automation applications (TEF on manufacturing), which can
reveal data about production facilities critical for food security (TEF on Agri-food), mobility (TEF on Smart
cities and communities), etc. iv) or EU’s communication or transport infrastructure (TEF on Smart cities and
communities).
The AI initiatives under Digital Europe Programme will be linked to the EU data and cloud initiatives (smart
middleware platforms, as part of cloud-to-edge services or as a part of EU cloud marketplaces) with the aim
of training AI with those datasets. In particular, the TEFs will establish links with the relevant dataspaces and
cloud actions so that these resources can be made available to the technology providers using the TEFs and
interested in training and testing their AI solutions. TEFs and the AI-on-demand initiatives will become one
point of access to data spaces and cloud activities, therefore the same restrictions should be in place. This
includes TEFs in all the prioritized sectors, which have corresponding data spaces in Digital Europe
Programme, namely agri-food, manufacturing, health, mobility, and smart communities.
Moreover, the technology itself, made available on the AI-on-demand platform and tested in TEFs, and the
sectors chosen is sensitive from a security perspective. Artificial Intelligence and robotics qualify as critical
technologies and dual use items under article 2(1) of Council Regulation (EC) No 428/2009 and as factors
that may be taken into consideration by Member States or the Commission for screening foreign direct
investment under EU foreign investment regulation (EU 2019/452).
In particular, the TEFs outputs, validated AI solutions, ready to be deployed, will be made available to any
type of users, including public authorities, providing public services, or private sector, including those
working in security sensitive areas (energy, mobility, some security sensitive manufacturing sectors), or
areas with an impact on public order (e.g. healthcare, food supply chain) therefore the highest level of trust
and security of the TEF process and output must be ensured.
Therefore, trust is an essential feature of the TEFs: organizations running the TEFs will have a big
responsibility in validating the AI products and solutions, including their security features and protection
of fundamental right and EU values, before their large diffusion. They will also have access to confidential
information about the solutions tested in their facilities, some of which are likely to be related to the
security or safety aspects of the solutions; therefore they will have to be trusted by third parties, and must
ensure highest level of trust and security, which justifies the use of article 12(6). In addition, organisations
running the TEFs will have access to sensitive public sector and private data, including from the sensitive