Commission adopts eEurope communication
The European Commission has adopted a communication to the European Council and the European Parliament on 30 November highlighting the progress of the eEurope initiative and pinpointing areas for action. Galvanised by recent figures showing an increase of Internet connectivity in Europe, the communication gives an indication of the impact that eEurope has had. It has helped foster arrangements at Member State, regional, associate country level and even private sector levels. It has also led to faster adoption of legislation, specific measures (such as linguistic diversity in the Internet, establishing a research network backbone and moving towards a .eu domain) and the results have been illustrated through benchmarking. Linking the results of the benchmarking results to policy implementation will be one of the next challenges for the initiative. In addition, the communication calls for a refining of the coordination measures in place for the initiative, particularly in relation to information systems security. It also highlights the fact that productivity gains have not been generated by digital technologies and pinpoints the reasons for this. Another challenge will be to create a favourable e-commerce environment, particularly for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in Europe. Finally, using the potential of the new economy to harness growth in enlargement and developing countries is discussed. The communication concludes by suggesting that 'within the next two years eEurope 2002 requires the achievement of some ambitious objectives'. One way to bring this about is for greater links between the efforts and transparency, which will be helped by the creation of an eEurope website in the coming months.