Brussels, 09/04/2001 (Agence Europe) - The Union of Industries of the European Union (UNICE) is concerned at several of the proposals contained in the European Commission's Communication on cybercrime. While UNICE welcomes the European Commission's initiative to create a safer information society, it believes that "the Commission's plans may be premature and create a good deal of uncertainty for business". UNICE stresses that it is "essential that the Commission does not adopt an approach that may prove unnecessarily prescriptive and burdensome for business with high compliance costs" and points out that the Council of Europe is in the process of preparing an International Convention on Cybercrime. UNICE says there is no point in "duplicating legislation", with the Commission "going further" than the Council of Europe Convention. The Commission should avoid placing unnecessary burdens on industry. UNICE believes that a "more global" rather than regional focus on cybercrime is required.
UNICE believes that the Commission's Communication should focus on crimes against the information infrastructure itself rather than on traditional crimes whose commission is made easier by the information society infrastructure, such as child pornography, racism and xenophobia, which should be "addressed by other means".
UNICE did, however, approve of the European Commission's proposed creation of an EU-wide forum on cybercrime to discuss the legislative proposals.