Brussels, 27/03/2003 (Agence Europe) - Confirming the predictions of observers close to the dossier (see yesterday's EUROPE, p.12), the "Telecommunications" Council on Thursday reached political agreement on the dossier on commercial exploitation of public sector documents, Germany and the United Kingdom having lifted their reservations. With Parliament's opinion, the Fifteen were also able to convert their "general approach" defined last December on the "Modinis" monitoring programme of the eEurope action plan into political agreement. Even so, in both dossiers, the follow-up to the legislative process could prove tricky, as the Fifteen's copy diverges on many points from what the European Parliament wanted.
Furthermore, after the discussions in Council on 5 December on the crisis in the EU telecommunications sector (see EUROPE of 6 December 2002, p.11), Council had a further exchange of views on the situation, which was described as "fruitful and useful" by the Greek Secretary of State for Transport and Communication, Manolis Stratakis, who chaired the session. The European Commissioner for the Information Society, Erkki Liikanen, welcomed the "real commitment of all Ministers" to implement the provisions of the eEUROPE 2005 action plan. He gave details on the three specific points on which this commitment focussed: connection of all public administrations to broadband by the end of 2004; technological neutrality (not favouring one technology over another, e.g. fibre optic over wireless communications); and the quality of the content. Referring more specifically to the "telecoms crisis", Mr Liikanen indicated that use of structural funds for third generation mobile telephone basic infrastructure would be encouraged, and that his colleague in Competition, Mario Monti, would present guidelines before the summer on sharing network infrastructure. On the implementation of the new regulatory framework on telecommunications, Mr Liikanen welcomed the fact that the vast majority of Member States would be "ready" in July, admitting however that "two or three or three or four Member States will not be ready". On this subject, he warned that the Commission "would be playing its role of guardian of the Treaties".
The proposed directive "on re-use and commercial exploitation of public sector documents" aims to put in place a set of common rules in this area, in order to get over regulatory obstacles to development of value-added cross-border information products and services (by combining data from public sources and by exploiting the potential of information and communication technology- ICT) in the EU and to provide the legal security needed for this development. At present, because of differences between rules and practices in Member States in terms of charging fees for public sector information, response times, exclusivity agreements and general rights to re-use information, it is extremely difficult for companies to create products spanning the Union. The political agreement reached by the Fifteen lists the requirements on handling requests for re-use; as to the response times, he predicted that, in cases where a licence is needed, public sector bodies would offer the applicant a definitive licence within a maximum of twenty working days, which could be extended by fifteen days for more complicated requests. As to fees, it is stipulated that, if royalties are deducted, they must be fixed and published in advance; and most importantly, the total revenue from authorisation for re-use of documents must not exceed the costs of collation, production, reproduction, and distribution, "whilst allowing a reasonable return on investment". The agreement also contains a "non-discrimination and fair trade" clause and raises the principle of forbidding exclusivity agreements, unless right of exclusivity is necessary for the provision of a general-interest service. It now remains to be seen how the European Parliament will react to a text which flouts the main amendment adopted at first reading (see EUROPE of 18 February, p.15), in other words the extension of the directive to all public sector "information", not just "documents" (an amendment submitted by the Commission in its modified proposal of 17 March). Furthermore, on tariffs, Parliament and Commission both want to see the inclusion of a formula for calculating a more specific "ceiling" than that adopted by the Fifteen.
The political agreement on the "Modinis" programme following up the eEurope action plan also departs from the text defended by the European Parliament, particularly as regards the planned financial envelope (20 million euros, whereas Commission and Parliament wanted 25 million), and the comitology aspect. These differences could choke the legislative procedure, in that, taking into account the recent entry into force of the Treaty of Nice, the "Modinis" proposed decision will be put to second reading in the context of the co-decision procedure.
The "Modinis" programme aims to provide financial support to Member States from 2003-2005 in order to help them ensure the "monitoring" of Europe (performance assessment, diffusion of good practices, network security etc.).
The Council listened to the Commission present its latest proposal aiming to set up a European Agency responsible for network and information security (EUROPE 11 February p 10), as well as the final report that it produced on the EUROPE 2002 programme. The Greek Presidency has informed the Council about the next world summit on the information society.