Brussels, 14/01/2016 (Agence Europe) - The European Parliament is ready to begin negotiations with the Council of the EU on access to public sector websites. On Thursday 14 January, the Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee granted a negotiating brief to the rapporteur, Dita Charanzova (ALDE, Czech Republic). Negotiations are therefore expected to begin soon.
The draft directive was presented in December 2012 and establishes the technical provisions for facilitating access to the content of 12 public sector websites providing essential information services to the population (such as, for example, job hunting services and university enrolment).
During the inter-institutional negotiations, the Parliament and Council are expected to propose an expansion in the scope of the directive's application. In compliance with the negotiating brief that the Luxembourg Presidency just managed to obtain on 18 December 2015, the Council is, however, expected to appeal for a range of derogations for the intranet and extranets, websites that are no longer updated, as well as other specific content (such as third-party content that is not requested by public sector bodies, cartography services and certain kinds of reproductions for articles from heritage collections). Co-legislators are also expected to discuss the issue of mobile content access (such as on mobile telephones and iPads), which the European Parliament has been calling for but which has not been included in the Council's policy.
There are more than 761,000 public sector websites that provide access to information and services. Nonetheless, only a third of them meet international standards on web access. The negotiating brief was granted in the Parliamentary committee by 32 votes in favour, with 2 abstentions. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)