Brussels, 06/12/2001 (Agence Europe) - As expected, at their meeting in Brussels on Thursday, the EU Telecommunications Ministers discussed the three-way negotiations with Parliament and Commission over the telecoms package. At the end of the meeting, little convergence appeared to have been found, but the acting President of the Council, Rik Daems, when speaking to journalists, signalled without giving details that a solution under the Belgian Presidency could not yet be ruled out given the excellent contacts with the Commission and the Parliament. He admitted that everything hang on the EP's second reading (expected next week) but the Belgian Telecommunications Minister was determined to pursue his "three-way tango" with the EP and Commission to avoid having to go to conciliation and hand on a fine-tuned dossier to the Spanish Presidency.
The Council reached political agreement on the common position on the draft directive on personal data and the protection of privacy in electronic communications and according to the Information Society Commissioner, Erkki Liikanen, the agreement should lead directly to conciliation when considering the EP vote on 13 November (see EUROPE of 16 November, p.12). Parliament recommends letting Member States decide, according to their own legislation, whether commercial e-mail (e-spams) should be allowed with the prior consent of the recipients (opt in) or whether recipients should have the right to ask to be removed from electronic mailing lists (opt out) but the Council clearly came down on the side of opt in across the European Union. Parliament and Council also disagree on the highly controversial cookies issue (spies used by webmasters to monitor the surfing behaviour of people visiting their websites). The EP wants Member States to simply ban the use of electronic communications networks for storing information stored in the computer of a user or subscriber. The Council's agreement is more circumspect and basically stipulates that consumers have to be informed about the use of cookies and should have easy opt-out options. The measures outlined in the agreement on cybercrime are another bone of contention between the different institutions. Mr Liikanen feels that storing data can only be justified for invoicing purposes. The Council decided that for security reasons, Member States should have the right to not apply this non-retention of information principle while respecting the European Human Rights Convention case law. This idea will cause grinding of teeth at Parliament where the view is that such derogations are only acceptable if they are appropriate, proportionate and for a limited duration but the text adopted on Thursday avoids the issue of how long data can be kept.
More on security… Following the 11 September attacks, the Council adopted a resolution on the security of information networks that calls on Member States to take measures such as promoting the sharing of information, cooperating with other Member States and using the ISO 15408 standard to set common criteria. Member States are also called upon to assess by the end of June 2002 how effective their intervention measures are for covering IT disasters. The Council welcomed the Commission's plans to set up a cybercrime workgroup in the next few months in order to draw a lesson from national experience in terms of enhancing information and network security and Member States' ability to cope (both independently and in tandem with others) with serious telematic security issues. The Commission presented ministers with the 7th report into the implementation of telecommunications regulation, its e-EUROPE 2002 project (for establishing a Community framework for the use of information from the public sector) and its Communication on safer internet use. The Council also formally endorsed its 15 October common position on opening up post services to competition.