Eurescom mess@ge interview with Commissioner Viviane Reding: "My main objective is to be a Commissioner for innovation, creativity and inclusion"
Excerpts from the interview: Eurescom mess@ge: What are your main goals as Commissioner for Information Society and Media? Reding: My main objective is to be a Commissioner for innovation, creativity and inclusion. Firstly, I would like to promote innovation through information and communication technologies to make our European economy more competitive. Secondly, I want to promote a sound economic and creative basis for the creation of European content for all media. Thirdly, I will make sure that we create an information society for all, including also the older generation, people with disabilities and people who are simply not familiar with new technologies. I would like to encourage everyone so see this latter task not as a burdensome obligation, but as a unique social and economic opportunity. Eurescom mess@ge: What is you vision for the evolving convergence of ICT and electronic media? Reding: I see that by the end of this decade, the long-awaited technological convergence between media content, communication infrastructure and equipment will finally have taken place. To take account of this, Commission President Barroso has for the first time in the history of the Commission entrusted the responsibility for Information Society and Media to one and the same Commissioner. I am thus the Commissioner for convergence, and I am prepared to draw the regulatory conclusions from technological convergence. Eurescom mess@ge: In your hearing before the European Parliament, you made digital inclusion a priority. What are your plans to increase inclusion and avoid the widening of the digital divide in Europe? Reding: You are absolutely right that inclusion is one of the three priority themes of my term as Information Society Commissioner. This is why I have launched in January a public consultation on how to make the benefits of information and communication technologies available to the widest possible range of citizens, including older people and people with disabilities. This consultation is a first step in my endeavour to remove the technical challenges and difficulties that people with disabilities and others experience when trying to use electronic products or services such as computers, mobile phones, or the Internet. Information and communication technologies can be powerful tools for bringing people together, improving their health and welfare, and making their jobs and social lives richer and more rewarding. But over 90 million EU citizens either cannot reap these benefits in full, or are effectively cut off from them because of age or disabilities. Making ICT products and services more accessible is thus a social, ethical and political imperative. At the same time, it makes sense economically. Eurescom mess@ge: According to the Kok report on the Lisbon strategy ("Facing the Challenge), the European effort towards realising the knowledge society have not been sufficient; Europe is still lagging behind the US. What is the European Commission doing to achieve the Lisbon goals and make Europe the leading knowledge economy in the world? Reding: The analysis of the Kok report is right, and there is no room for complacency. I would like just to point to one of our deficiencies about which I am very concerned: We know that ICT is the single most important research and technology field for delivering growth. And yet, in Europe we don't invest in it nearly as much as other major economies. We put 20 percent of our research spending on ICT; the competition spends 30 percent. I thus support very actively the Commission proposal to step up Europe's research spending both at national and at EU level. In addition, I believe that the next few years will see a major period of growth, based on high-speed fixed and wireless Internet services and the convergence of different electronic media and services, and that we have to give our policies affecting this development a coherent and flexible framework. I have therefore launched a new initiative called i2010 (European Information Society 2010 the editor), which intends to build on this opportune wave of technological and economic development. The interview was conducted by Milon Gupta, editor-in-chief of Eurescom mess@ge. The full interview is available at ,http://www.eurescom.de/message/messageMar2005/Interview_with_Commissioner_Viviane_Reding.asp