Brussels, 06/06/2002 (Agence Europe) - As we indicated yesterday, on 5 June the Commission presented a new Draft Directive on exploitation of public sector information Directive aiming to facilitate the re-use of public sector information throughout Europe. The aim is to lower the barriers which Europe's content companies. The result should decrease the gap between European companies and their counterparts in the US, where a single set of rules has helped stimulate a market several times larger than in the EU. Public organisations collect and hold vast amounts of 'public sector information', ranging from financial and geographic data to tourist information. It is a potentially rich raw material for new information products and services, with an economic value in the European Union that is estimated at € 68 billion, comparable to industries such as legal services and printing. There is a growing need for cross-border information products and content a trend, which will be strengthened by the move towards mobile content services. The potential of public sector information is not realised today due to a number of legal and practical barriers. Different rules and practices in the Member States concerning charges, response times, exclusive arrangements and the general availability of information for re-use make it extremely difficult for companies to create Europe-wide products. Legislative activities at national level are already under way in a number of Member States but they are working at different speeds and in different directions, which could end up in producing further restrictions. In this context the Commission's proposal presented on Wednesday aims to achieve minimum harmonisation of the legal framework for the exploitation of public sector information, fair trading, charges and response times. Erkki Liikanen, European Commissioner for the Information Society explained that better use of information from the public sector would allow economic activity to be re-launched, creating jobs in the European digital industrial sector, largely through SMEs. Citizens would also find advantages due to the creation of a series of information products with added value, which the public sector is not able to offer, added the Commissioner.