BackEU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region empowers game-changing business data exchange
Back in 2020 the Baltic Sea Region community turned to wider audience to look for groundbreaking ideas and flagship initiatives that fundamentally could change the way the civil society, public and private sector operates and thinks and cooperates transnationally. Looking at the megatrends that shape the environments, Estonian Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications noticed that digitalisation and wider use of technologies, smart data management and data interoperability are more in focus and offer variety of opportunities to make processes faster, easier and more personalised. Projecting this idea to business environment jointly with researchers showed that business data is not optimally handled. Companies need to submit reports to different authorities, some of the data might overlap and reporting burden increases in time. For businesses it means loss of valuable resources – time and money – instead of creating added value.
This idea received the recognition and support from the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region and Policy Area Innovation. The macro-regional relevance of the issue was highly valued by the stakeholders whom the initiating ministry onboarded and had discussions with.
Collaboration creates joint solutions
Followed by DIGINNO and DINNOCAP projects supported by INTERREG Baltic Sea Region, Estonian Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications explored the areas where cross-border data exchange could benefit the most for companies. The ministry identified that seamless exchange of e-receipts and e-invoices could play a great role. Know Your Customer procedure, that is required for opening a bank account or purchasing a real estate in foreign country, is costly and time consuming for businesses. The process can be improved if the data could be digitally exchanged across the borders based on companies’ consent. The first service models were designed by projects’ partners. Another example was found from the logistics sector, where companies handle a lot of paper documents and controlling the cargo and documents literally stops the business, because the vehicle needs to be stopped on the roadside. eCMR cargo data exchange platform was developed and tested and is now taken as a basis for Electronic Freight Transport Information jurisdiction development in the European Commission. The fully digital infrastructure implementation is supported by Connected European Facility projects across the EU.
Policy development implements the changes
In 2025, these topics are still relevant and a high priority when speaking of businesses’ digitalization and wider support. Topics evolve in time and for the cross-border data exchange it is also needed that data is standardized and handled in unified manners. This way, it can be used multiple times, for many purposes and businesses need only to insert data once.
To create this common ground it is important to find like-minded thinkers across borders. With the support from the European Commission Technical Support Instrument fund, Estonian Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications co-created the joint vision of international collaboration in the real-time economy field. National authorities, ministries and agencies gathered and mapped the common interests and goals in the Baltic Sea Region. There was a particularly strong thrive to foster a wider digitalization of business, using e-services and standardizing business reporting.
Today the real-time economy approach is at the centre in EU policies that target the business sector. Reducing the administrative and reporting burden, offering the companies the environment to operate more easily and improve the functioning of single market, the approach is emphasized in every visionary document.
Changes take time. Policy Area Innovation coordinator organisations are eager to see where this pathway leads us and how the cross-border data exchange really can happen in its full potential. We are excited to see the development of business eWallets, data spaces and other major components of digital ecosystem will fall in place.
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