EU needs Internet representative for international negotiations, say MEPs
European Parliament adopted almost unanimously a resolution by Italian MEP Massimo Carraro on the European Commission's communication on the organisation and management of the Internet on 14 March. The report, adopted by 422 to 1 with 12 abstentions focuses predominantly on ICANN, the Internet corporation for assigned names and numbers. An EU representative charged with negotiating with the international organisations responsible for the development of the Internet should be established, according to MEPs, who also urged the Commission to take a lead role in negotiations with governments from the USA and other parts of the world. Parliament emphasised that it is necessary to guarantee the independence of ICANN from the USA government and stressed that the geographical areas covered by ICANN should be represented in the future by democratically elected representatives on the organisation's board of directors. MEPs also took the opportunity to urge the creation of an EU domain name. They added that the Commission should develop, in conjunction with ICANN, effective codes of conduct to cover the allocation and protection of domain names and legislation to combat fraud and cybersquatting. Parliament passed an amendment emphasising that the new domain names have been introduced too slowly. In future the process should be conducted more transparently and democratically, say MEPs.