1. Roberto Cencioni European Commission DG CONNECT Communications Networks, Content & Technology Media & Data Zagreb, 30 November 2012

2. the European Union brings together 500 million people speaking many languages…  half of the EU adult population don’t speak English  no such thing as a digital lingua franca since the advent of the social Web, smartphones, e-readers… EU policy framework: "Digital Agenda for Europe" build a digital single market where content & services can flow freely support cross-border exchanges between public services ease business internationalisation, esp. SMEs … but what if you don’t understand what's being displayed?

3. EC has supported Language Technologies & Applications since 1980s a fresh start since 2008  renewed political commitment  explosion of online content, esp. social networks  sizeable industry of ICT-based language services  a powerful enabler for next-generation ICT approx 150 M funding in the last 5 years nearly 60 projects underway two calls for project proposals open until mid-Jan

4. e main themes of our projects “… effective solutions that support business and inter- personal communication and enable people to make sense of online content and services in Europe's many languages.” global content processing, eg automated translation mining of unstructured information, eg text analytics natural interaction, eg speech understanding & dialogue in and between multiple languages

5. main features of our projects multi-party, multi-nation partnerships academia + industry + "launching" users focus on generic enabling technologies emphasis on impact  target groups, application scenarios, demonstrators  good mix of research & commercial players  significant involvement of SMEs

6. research: META projects (2010-2013)  a unifying vision & agenda  pooling & reuse of basic data & software resources  assessing the "digital readiness" of individual languages  mobilisation & networking at (trans-)national level business: LT-INNOVATE (2012-2014)  global forum for commercial developers & vendors  promote innovation, stimulate take-up, overcome non- technical barriers public sector: promote the use of LT by our own institution (on-going)  new EC machine translation service; inter-service group with major departments

7. current state of play: completing the current programme (2012-13) preparing the new programmes (2014-20)  research & innovation  infrastructure

8. last series of calls under the current programme:  FP7 ICT Work Programme, Challenge 4 – Digital Content & Languages  approx 40 M, closing mid-January 2013 Call–10, research, WP objective 4.1:  content analytics  machine translation  multimodal interaction SME-DCA Call, innovation, WP objective 4.3:  "industrialisation" of promising technologies  first-use validation & exploitation channels

9. Upcoming Horizon 2020 (2014-2020) research & innovation; EC proposal: 80 B of which ~20% for ICT; 3 pillars:  excellent science (incl. Future & Emerging ICT Technologies)  industrial leadership (incl. 6 ICT themes of which one on information / content / data / language)  societal challenges (eg health, energy, transport…) on-going discussions with Council & EP  outcome depends on concomitant discussion of MFF (= multi-year EU budget) initial concrete orientations by spring 2013  draft work programme, 2014-2015 operations  choice of instruments, indicative budget breakdown

10. CEF – Connecting Europe Facility (2014-2020) pan-European, public-interest infrastructures a-la-TEN  emphasis on service provision, inter-connection & deployment, not on R&I 3 pillars: Transport, Energy & ICT (9 B proposed)  for ICT: (i) broadband networks, (ii) “Digital Service Infrastructures” o eGovernment, eHealth, eCulture, Open Data… o Multilingual Access to online Services aim is to "enable service providers to offer their content & services in as many languages as possible, in a most effective way"  core platform (hub) + general-purpose resources, both software & data + exemplary cross-border services  co-developed with government & industry

11. conclusions challenging times hence emphasis on competitiveness, growth & jobs research, innovation & infrastructure to reinforce each other heavy competition with other policy areas… hence  achieve critical mass & integrate research and non- research work; a single DG.CONNECT unit (G3 "Data Value Chain")  a shared responsibility: need to move from sponsorship to partnership o research o industry o government

12. conclusions the next 6 months will be crucial for the future of LT within H2020 and CEF to be successful:  well connected & mobilized community  well understood impact on economy & society  broad national recognition & support

13. info sources: EC inquiries, current programme cnect-g3@ec.europa.eu kimmo.rossi@ec.europa.eukimmo.rossi@ec.europa.eu, susan.fraser@ec.europa.eususan.fraser@ec.europa.eu EU programmes 2014-2020 http://ec.europa.eu/research/horizon2020/index_en.cfm https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/connecting-europe-facility LT-INNOVATE: http://www.lt-innovate.eu http://www.lt-innovate.eu META-NET: http://www.meta-net.eu/ http://www.meta-net.eu/