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Projects & Clusters
The eEurope Initiative
Context
eEurope is a political initiative to ensure the European Union fully benefits for generations to come from the changes the Information Society is bringing. These changes, the most significant since the Industrial Revolution, are far-reaching and global. They are not just about technology: they affect everyone, everywhere.
Managing this transformation represents the central economic and social challenge for the Union. eEurope is intended to accelerate positive change in the Union. It aims at ensuring this change towards the Information Society is cohesive rather than divisive, integrating rather than fragmenting, an opportunity not a threat. In essence, eEurope aims at bringing the benefits of the Information Society within reach of all Europeans.
eEurope 2002
At the European Council held in Lisbon on 23-24 March 2000, the Heads of Government and State of the EU-15 set the ambitious goal for Europe for the next decade to become 'the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world'. This declaration recognised the urgent need for Europe to quickly exploit the opportunities of the knowledge-based economy and, in particular, the internet. In response, an eEurope 2002 Action Plan was launched in the Feira European Council on 19-20 June 2000.
One of the measures (with associated target dates) was especially related to the achievement of faster internet for researchers and students. As a response, the Commission launched a number of initiatives under Research Networking in topics such as GÉANT, IPv6 and GRIDs. Also, in January 2000, the Commission published a Communication entitled 'Towards a European Research Area', which set as strategic priorities a better use of electronic networks by European scientific communities and the creation of virtual centres of excellence.
However, it was identified that Europe would need to invest more to provide both a truly 'state-of-the-art' infrastructure and the technologies required to fully exploit it. In particular, major improvements were identified as necessary in campus networks.
eEurope 2002 Action Plan
Objective 1: A cheaper, faster, secure internet
- b) Faster internet for researchers and students
- The Lisbon European Council requested the creation of a very high-speed trans-European network for electronic scientific communications by end of 2001 linking research institutions and universities, as well as scientific libraries, scientific centres and, progressively, schools.
The challenge
High-speed networks will open up new possibilities for collaborative learning and researching in and between public and private sector. Applications developed in academia today are often the basis for the commercial applications of tomorrow. The Member States and Commission must ensure that this potential for innovation is fully exploited. With faster internet a new concept in computing is emerging - distributed computing over networks. This is ultimately conceptualised in the idea of the 'World Wide GRID' -WWG. The concept is to facilitate collaboration between geographically dispersed teams in all scientific disciplines and industrial areas by enabling them to share data and computing infrastructure, working together in real time. WWG calls for further development, integration and validation of technology which enables the seamless integration of networks, computers and storage into a unified system.
eEurope 2005
During its Barcelona meeting, the EU Heads of State called on the Commission to develop a comprehensive eEurope Action Plan for 2005, to be presented at the European Council meeting in Seville in June 2002. The focus of this initiative is to be on users, making it immediately clear that the development of services, applications and content are considered crucial.
Consequently, in May 2002, the Commission proposed the 2005 Action Plan, which would be focused on five core priorities on which Member State governments should take initiatives:
- First, the promotion of content, services and applications, introducing for example value-added services based upon the re-use of public sector information.
- Second, the provision of interactive public services on-line, promoting gains in productivity while ensuring equity.
- Third, the reinforcement of digital inclusiveness in all its aspects, individual, social, geographical, in education and in training.
- Fourth, the promotion of broadband internet access which will need to be in place to ease the widespread deployment of resource-intensive services such as telemedicine or virtual research done in remote laboratories.
- Fifth, the building up of an acceptable level of trust and confidence in cyberspace.