eEurope 2002 - Results achieved and priorities for Barcelona

Kommissar Liikanen fordert die Erarbeitung einer Breitband-Strategie bis zum Frühfahr 2002. Als mögliche Maßnahmen nennt er unter anderem steuerliche Anreize und Pilotprojekte.

Die Pressemitteilung von 12.02.2002 wird im folgenden wiedergegeben.

Mr Erkki Liikanen

Member of the European Commission, responsible for Enterprise and the Information Society

"eEurope 2002 - Results achieved and priorities for Barcelona"

Press conference

Brussels, 12 February 2002

The main objective of the eEurope 2002 action plan which the Commission launched following the Lisbon European Council two years ago was to have an immediate impact in the field of Information Society: namely bringing Europe online. eEurope 2002 set out to accelerate progress in the legal framework on telecoms and e-commerce and to re-orient financial instruments. We also defined a set of indicators (23)for benchmarking in order to track progress. The eEurope Benchmarking report that was adopted last week by the Commission is the first comprehensive reporting on these indicators. The idea of eEurope was to set clear targets with equally clear deadlines to be achieved by the end of 2002. Has this idea worked? It has. Let me give you a few examples: The new telecoms package, as well as the regulation on unbundling the local loop, have been rapidly adopted. This will generate improvements for both consumers and the industry in Europe. A light, but effective, legal framework on e-commerce has been accepted. Internet penetration has increased from 18% in March 2000 to 38% in December 2001. This is a strong and explosive development. Nearly 90% of schools are now connected to the Internet and over 90% of businesses have Internet access. Governments are moving on-line. But I come back to this. Europe now has the fastest research network in the world. The eEurope approach has worked and has delivered good results on the goals set by the Lisbon strategy. But this does not imply that our work is over. We must maintain the momentum to ensure that the development continues to move forward. What are then the new challenges? It is clear that the true societal and economic benefits for all citizens and companies will only be realised with still fuller usage of the Internet and with wider and better availability. In this respect the benchmarking report has some important observations: Yes, Internet penetration has risen rapidly, but it is very unevenly distributed across Europe. There is a north-south divide which should be bridged rapidly. (This is not the case with mobile communications.) Indeed, schools have massively been connected. But there are still too few PCs, and the Internet has not yet been really integrated into education. Likewise only 1/3 of all workers had digital skills training. I do not have to convince anyone here of the essential role of education and training. Even if almost any business is now connected, business-to-consumer e-commerce is still small. It is likely that security concerns is one of those. The number of virus attacks has more than doubled in a year, and Europe still has only half as many secure Internet servers as the USA. And finally, governments are going online, But real interactive e-government web-sites are rare. They are the ones that really make life easier for citizens and businesses and improve the effectiveness of public administration. That requires a reform of the administration itself. This needs a top-level political commitment by the Member States Another reason why we have not come to the end of our actions is that technology moves ahead rapidly. Faster or high-speed - Internet, that is, broadband, is now a real option. Broadband is the essential physical infrastructure of the knowledge society. Without broadband we will not deliver fully on the Lisbon strategy. The Commission report to the Barcelona Summit made it clear that broadband Internet access will be a key factor for improving the performance of the economy. The time has now come to set out a comprehensive European initiative to focus the efforts by stake-holders and players in this field. Our goal must be to make broadband available to everyone and at affordable prices. If not, the case of e-government services and multimedia content becomes weaker to the detriment to our consumers and industry. We need a European broadband strategy by this spring. What could be key elements of such a strategy? This is above all about realising real benefits for users, citizens, companies, and administrations. Foremost we need to look into compelling usage of broadband. Of course providing such content is above all a role of the private sector. The public sector should commit itself to e-learning and e-government, including the use of mobile broadband for public services. I also want to emphasise in this respect the great potential of e-health. We will focus our financial instruments for this as much as possible and promote European cooperation. We also intend to propose a Directive this spring to unlock the treasure of public sector information. We need to define realistic but ambitious targets. We will make full use of the new telecoms package to safeguard healthy competition. Already we are actively pursuing unbundling of the local loop. The package is also based upon convergence, which will make it easier to have competition between different pipes. We will follow a technology-neutral approach. Technology moves fast, it is not for governments to pick winners. Users will make the choice. It will also not be possible for a single technology to cover all of the EU. In fact, having competing technologies such as cable and ADSL helps to give the roll-out of broadband a boost. For all technology solutions we need to make sure that the Internet is future-proof and robust. We will push forward the IPv6 protocol, which is will extend the address space of the Internet enormously. We expect to come out with a Communication in about a week from now. We need to vigorously pursue a more secure Internet through international cooperation, a cyber taskforce, R&D and best practice. This is especially relevant for broadband, as this is always-on and therefore more vulnerable for virus attacks. Measures to promote broadband at the national level include, next to regulation, also tax incentives, demand aggregation, pilots, and coordination in construction of antennas or the digging-up of streets. We do not believe that there is a single magic formula that is the best one for all. But we can and will do two things: take away barriers to make use of any such promotional measures, where possible; and we will put experiences together and compare good practices to learn from each other. Finally, we need to be realistic about broadband. There are tremendous benefits, but every virtue has its vice. For example, we would not want to create a new digital divide with broadband. I am all for an open societal dialogue as integral part of our European broadband strategy. What are the next steps? How do we move ahead? eEurope should be continued beyond 2002 and shift its focus more towards effective usage and availability of the Internet. The Commission is happy that the Spanish Presidency shares this analysis and has put the launch of an "eEurope 2005 action plan" on its agenda. A first discussion on a possible new action plan will take place at the Informal Telecoms Council in Vitoria on 22/23 February. The results of that Ministerial discussion will then be forwarded to the Barcelona Summit on 15/16 March, as part of the general assessment of the achievements and future steps to realise the Lisbon objectives. The Commission intends to place the issue of broadband high on the agenda of Barcelona and hopes that the Member States will endorse our plans for a comprehensive and ambitious strategy to make broadband available to everyone in Europe.

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