Brussels, 25/03/2002 (Agence Europe) - It comes as no surprise that the Council of EU Telecommunications Ministers adopted, on Monday, a resolution aimed at improving access to public websites. The Council also reached an agreement ("general guidelines" in the absence of an opinion from Parliament) concerning the improvements to be made to electronic data exchange between administrations (IDA programme). The same thing is true for the new guidelines proposed by the Commission for trans-European telecommunications networks (TEN-T).
In response to the Commission's communication of last September, which recommended better access to public websites for 37 million disabled persons and elderly persons (see EUROPE of 26 September 2001, p.13), the Council resolution encouraged the Member State to implement the specific measures and sufficient resources to this end. It also calls on a high level group on employment and the social dimension of the information society (ESDIS) to follow through progress achieved and invites the Member States and the Commission to improve accessibility to the web in the context of the European Year for the Disabled (2003), and to maintain permanent dialogue with the organisations representing them, as well as with those representing the elderly. The Commission is also invited to present, during the first half of 2004, a report giving an overview of progress achieved.
Regarding the two proposals of decision defining the new guidelines, projects of common interest and actions relating to interoperability and to access to trans-European networks for the exchange of date between administrations (IDA) (see EUROPE of 23 March, page 10), the Council reached common guidelines on changes foreseen by the Commission, namely: - the adoption of committee procedure and the extension of the IDA II programme to certain non-Community countries (the candidate countries could use at their cost the IDA generic services as exchange of data with these countries is necessary for implementation of Community policy); - the introduction of a financial reference for the period 2002-2004, with an allocation of EUR 39.8 million for projects of common interest and EUR 34.2 million for actions aimed at improving interoperability of IDA networks and access to these networks. Furthermore, the Council also defined a general guideline on the proposals made by the Commission for reviewing the identification of common projects on trans-European telecommunications networks. The Council charged the Spanish Presidency with the task of forwarding, in an informal way, these two guidelines to the Parliament with a view to seeking to reach an agreement at first reading.
In the wake of the Barcelona Summit, which invited the Commission to establish a global action plan, eEUROPE 2005, with a view to the Seville Summit, the Council held an exchange of views on the ways to speed up the setting in place of wide band infrastructures, on the diversity of platforms (PC, digital TV, mobile 3rd generation communications) to maximise access to all that is digital, on priority actions to be carried out in the field of administration, apprenticeship and on-line health services and electronic commerce, and on the security of networks and the ways to facilitate the introduction of the Internet Ipv6 protocol. Finally, the Council held an exchange of views on reform of ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers). The debate on the reform of ICANN and, more generally, on the international management of Internet relates to the prospect of the expiry, on 30 September 2002, of the memorandum of agreement between ICANN and the US Trade Department, which forms the foundation of the current agreements. This exchange of views is a first discussion at political level on how to tackle the international governance of the Internet when international discussions are to come. The questions should, moreover, be tackled during EU/US dialogue on the information society that will be held on 11 April as well as on the preparatory work of the UE/US Summit on 2 May.