Neelie Kroes hopes to make the EU the ‘e-EU’ with new strategy

The EU has launched a new cloud strategy, entitled “Unleashing the Potential of Cloud Computing in Europe”, designed to increase the use of and speed up cloud computing in Europe.

“Cloud computing could offer a huge lift to the European economy, but only if users can understand and trust it,” said EU digital agenda VP Neelie Kroes to open her speech yesterday.

The figures: a yearly 160bn Euro (£127.6bn) boost to the European gross domestic product (GDP) by 2020 – the equivalent of a few hundred euros per citizen – and a net gain of 2.5m jobs.

It’s not surprising, therefore, that Kroes called the cloud “a game-changer for our economy”.

According to the EU, one of the most important aspects of the strategy is to “cut through the jungle of technical standards”, with necessary standards to …