Catalonia leads an international alliance of governments in favor of emerging technologies

Maximizing the benefits of new disruptive technologies while ensuring the protection of Human Rights, cultural diversity, and democratic values. With this objective, the Generalitat has promoted the Disruptive & Emerging Technology Alliance (DETA), which involves states and regions from the four continents and which will focus on five areas: Artificial Intelligence, quantum technologies, digital rights, cybersecurity, and the NewSpace field.

The alliance has been launched with 12 governments: those of Costa Rica, Scotland, Wales, Quebec, Kyoto, Flanders, the French Occitania, the German Hessen; the Italian Emilia-Romagna, the Argentine province of Buenos Aires, the South Korean region of Gyeonggi, and the South African Western-Cape. The members of DETA will possibly expand in the coming months, following contacts that are being developed with interested governments.

The initiative aims to respond to the opportunities and also challenges posed by the emergence of these technologies, both in the provision of services to citizens and in the management of public policies. Thus, it aims to help member governments make the most of these technologies and adapt their public policies to the new possibilities they offer.

The coalition will be organized into working groups in which industrial, research, and civil society actors from the territories' ecosystems will participate

To delve deeper into the five major areas that the DETA will address, working groups will be created, focused on each of these priority areas. These groups, which will be led by governments, will also involve industrial, research, and civil society agents from the ecosystems of the territories integrated into the network.

First meeting, in Barcelona

Catalonia, based on this driving role, holds the rotating presidency of the DETA until 2025. In this context, Barcelona will host the first meeting of the new network, which will be held on November 6 and 7 in the Catalan capital. It will consist of a ministerial summit of the coalition, coinciding with the Smart City Expo World Congress.

The project, led by the Ministry of Business and Labor in collaboration with the Ministry of Foreign Action and the EU, already held two multilateral meetings at the end of last year, and brought together various governmental delegations of its members, taking advantage of their presence at the Mobile World Congress in February, with the aim of articulating this new global network around new disruptive technologies poised to transform reality.