Brussels, 26/03/2003 (Agence Europe) - The EU "Telecommunications" Council is to come to a political agreement on two dossiers on Thursday: re-use and commercial exploitation of public sector documents, and the "Modinis" follow-up programme to eEurope. Both points will be open to public deliberation, as was the recent proposal to create a European Agency responsible for network and information security, to be presented by the Commission (see EUROPE of 11 February, p.10). For the rest, the Commission will comment on its final report on the eEUROPE 2002 programme (see EUROPE of 13 February, p.8), and the Greek Presidency will inform Ministers on the next world Information Society summit.
Use of public sector documents. The proposed directive aims to make the most of the economic potential of information from the public sector, including options offered by information technology; in other words, to allow data from various sources to be combined to make value-added products and services. Public sector information (geographical information, or data on companies or traffic, for example, are an important financial asset), can facilitate the creation of new digital products and services, and are a key source of data for electronic commerce. The proposal provides for a minimum set of common rules doing away with legal uncertainty and overcoming regulatory barriers to development of cross-border information products in the EU, without affecting national rules on access to public information, or data protection levels in the Member States. During the Council (see EUROPE of 6 December 2002, p.11), Ministers centred their discussions on: - the principle that public sector organisations do not have to allow access to documents with a view to their re-use; tariff principles for the re-use of documents; - intellectual property rights issues. Although progress has been noted (see EUROPE of 6 December 2002, p.11), the Council failed to reach agreement, as various Member States (especially France, but also Germany and the United Kingdom) had hoped for greater opportunities for advance examination of the provisions relating to documents on which public service bodies possess intellectual property rights. According to sources close to the Presidency, an agreement should not be too far away. That said, it is the amended proposal presented by the Commission on 17 March that the Ministers will be debating this Thursday. In this new draft, the Commission has brought together certain amendments voted on by the European Parliament at first reading on 12 February (see EUROPE of 18 February 2003,p.15), particularly the one requesting that the words "public sector documents" be replaced by "public sector information", which constitutes an extension of the scope of the future directive.
"Modinis" programme. In the absence of Parliament's opinion, the Council in December arrived at a "general approach" to the programme (see EUROPE of 6 December 2002, p.11), intended to ensure that the eEurope action plan be followed up from 2003 to the end of 2005 by providing financial backing to actions by Member States to monitor performance, facilitate dissemination of good practice, analyse the economic and social consequences of the information society, and improve network and information security. As the Parliament delivered its opinion on 12 February (see EUROPE of 18 February, p.14), the Council should now be able to adopt a common position. With the entry into force of the Treaty of Nice, the proposed decision on "Modinis" will be put to co-decision, and the Parliament will thus be able to put forward its arguments on the budgetary envelope: whereas Commission and Parliament want a budget of 25 million Euros, Council wants to keep it down to 20 million Euros.