eContent adopted by Telecommunications Council
The European Telecommunications Council has adopted a multi-annual programme, eContent, aimed at encouraging the development and use of European digital content on world networks and promoting linguistic diversity in the information society. The programme, with a budget of 100 million euro, will be spread over four years, from 2001 to 2004. This is less than the 150 million euro, proposed by the European Commission, which was to be spread over five years due to objections from four Member States (UK, Germany, Austria and the Netherlands). Erkki Liikanen, the European Commission's Information Society Commissioner has welcomed the adoption of the eContent programme, saying that content is the key to exploiting the strong European position in mobile telephony, mobile internet access and digital TV. The Council noted the Commission's proposal on the creation of a '.eu' domain, and reaffirmed the importance of the issue. The Commission considers that '.eu' will further the promotion of a European identity on the Internet network and give European operators a more prominent place on the Internet.