Europe in the digital race: How can we strengthen our digital sovereignty? - with Alexander Rabe from eco e.V.

Artificial intelligence, cyber security and international competition for digital sovereignty: these are the buzzwords that will shape the economy and our daily lives in 2025. Alexander Rabe, Managing Director of eco e.V., the largest European association of the Internet industry, reveals in the latest episode of "Thanks for Shopping!" how companies are dealing with these challenges and what opportunities they present. Why do many companies in Germany still shy away from AI? What role does cybersecurity play in a world where every click is a potential threat? And how can digitalization help to strengthen our democracy? Alexander Rabe and our podcast hosts Saravanan Sundaram and Nadja Müller explore these and other questions together.

Between 2012 and 2016, Alexander worked in various roles for the Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V. (GI). Today, in his role as Managing Director, he is responsible for the strategic, content-related and communicative external presentation of the eco Association in Berlin, Brussels and Cologne. Thanks to his in-depth experience in the industry, Alexander knows exactly what is important for a successful digital strategy in the future and is optimistic: "We want a digital single market, we want to play a part in international competition and in Europe and we also have the potential."

However, digitalization is not just a technological change, but also a social process. Alexander knows this too, as he tells us that 33% of German companies do not use AI. In this episode of "Thanks for Shopping!", we examine the approaches we can use to support digitalization and the role that ChatGPT and new business models such as Temu and Co. play for our digital shopping worlds in e-commerce.