Liikanen says move to publish electronic standards online will boost innovation
Enterprise and Information Society Commissioner Erkki Liikanen has said that the decision of the European committee for standardisation (CEN) to publish electronic standards free of charge online from January 2002 will help to boost business growth and innovation through Internet usage. CEN's decision is part of the eEurope Standards action plan, which aims to benefit entrepreneurs by ensuring that new technology standards are sufficiently well-defined to make sure that information and communication technology (ICT) systems are interoperable. It represents an important step towards the improved dissemination of European standards and the development of an eEurope. 'The eEurope Standards action plan is a major contribution towards ensuring that more European companies go online and use the Internet to grow and innovate,' said Commissioner Liikanen. 'The launch of the eEurope Standardisation web site and free availability of standards that relate to e-business are significant steps to further promote European standards in Europe and elsewhere.' The eEurope Standards action plan also fosters cooperation between the public and private sectors by bringing together experts from fields such as e-learning, e-accessibility, Internet access and smart cards to develop practical solutions to support eEurope. The European Commission is supporting the plan's implementation to drive forward the standardisation work and ensure the participation of all relevant stakeholders in the process. eEurope action plan standardisation work aims to ensure that technologies necessary for the creation of an eEurope are properly defined and allow interworking between systems. It is sponsored by the Commission and spearheaded by European standards organisations CEN, CENELEC and ETSI. More than 3000 experts are currently involved in this work, which provides an effective open platform for consensus-building. eEurope standards are defined in workshops whose agreements will be made available for downloading free of charge from the CEN web site.