Project “TWIN2TECH” is implemented within the framework of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan 2021–2026 and is financed by European Union funds through the NextGenerationEU instrument.
The European Union is strongly focused on green and digital transformation policies in the current budget cycle. However, as global society simultaneously experiences multiple crises with contradictory and conflicting signals that have a profound and (likely) lasting impact on national economies, the business environment is becoming increasingly complex, and this is particularly challenging for smaller companies.
These challenges can be grouped into three groups. The first is the geopolitical crises that, with the recent spontaneous foreign trade policy of the new American administration, have made the business environment of trade-exposed countries very unstable. All the more so because the shocks came from an unexpected side. The second group of challenges consists of the ecological consequences of economic activity in the past, which will have to be addressed now so that the effects can only be felt in the long term. The administration of the European Union is particularly dedicated to this goal and imposes it through the introduction of a triple bottom line through the introduction of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) requirements. The third group of challenges is contained in the already lengthy process of digital transformation of production, business processes and management, whose economic effects are framed under the term Industry 4.0.
Doing business in such an environment, in which crises are linked and overlapping, creating a crisis continuity from the COVID-19 pandemic, through the war in Europe to the economic and political disunity of Western allies, makes the green and digital transformation of society difficult and slow, and it is expected that the effects of such policies will significantly slow down, complicate, and partly cancel out the financial and other efforts of such policies. The latter scenario is particularly undesirable given the significance of investments in the implementation of ESG policies in the European Union. Namely, it is estimated that by 2030, around 620 billion euros will be needed annually to implement the green transformation alone, which will increase to 1507 billion euros annually by 2040 (Alogoskoufis, 2021). These costs are driven by the need to finance the European Commission's REPowerEU plan and the Net-Zero Industry Act.