Brussels, 08/01/2014 (Agence Europe) - The Greek Presidency says that, among its priorities for the first half of 2014, the Transport, Telecoms and Energy Council has a key role to play in meeting the EUROPE 2020 targets by ensuring Europe is digitally connected. For telecoms, Greece is planning to move towards a digital single market. This will be the Greek Presidency's main objective. At the last Telecoms Council on 5 December (under the Lithuanian Presidency), Greece was asked to arrange an in-depth debate about particular aspects of the package unveiled by the European Commission (see EUROPE 10978). The European Parliament has made ggod progress and a committee will be voting at the end of February on a report by Pilar del Castillo (EPP, Spain). The Greek Presidency says it will work to promote all the measures needed to set up the digital single market and will also publish a roadmap on stability and development of the single market in question.
Other priorities to be pursued by the Greeks include adoption of the draft regulation on e-identification and boosting confidence on online payments in the single market, a key regulation for ensuring problem-free electronic money transfers to other countries and ensuring consumer rights are respected. Talks started with the European Parliament in November and are progressing well. The idea is to reach final agreement in first reading ahead of the European elections. The Presidency will promote the directive to reduce the cost of deploying high-speed electronic networks, crucial because the budget for telecoms in the Connecting Europe Facility has been slashed. The Greeks hope to complete work on the draft cyber-security directive unveiled by the European Commission, with measures for the private and public sector in key domains such as energy, transport and telecoms, encouraging greater cooperation among the member states when it comes to risk management and national authorities' incident reports. Two areas remain to be settled - notification of risks and incidents on the one hand, and the type of cooperation to be established to ensure coordinated response to any incident on the other. Greece sees as a priority the draft directive on access to data held by public authorities. The directive aims to harmonise legislation and rules in the member states to ensure all citizens have access to the websites run by public bodies. The Greek Presidency will also deal with the mid-term review of Europe's digital strategy and will examine the position that Europe will argue at the forthcoming global conference organised by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). (IL/transl.fl)