Brussels, 18/02/2004 (Agence Europe) - "The digital content market is complex and diverse. The world market is presently valued at 515 billion EUR. However, the European market, reflecting our rich cultural heritage, is fragmented, and much more so that the USA". It was with these words that the European Commissioner in charge of the Information Society, Erkki Liikanen, justified the presentation of the eContentplus programme (2005-2008) on Tuesday. This programme, with a budget of 163 million euros, comes under the initiative eEurope. It will support the development of multilingual content to feed into innovative on-line services throughout the EU. The Commission states that this contents will help to boost demand for broadband access, and bring greater advantages to business, the population and the economy. The new programme is more focused than its predecessor, eContent: it aims to support the combination of information from different systems, independently of format, language or locality. This also means ensuring that the contents can be distributed via different platforms, and that they are better adapted to the user's specific needs. The programme will focus on three types of information: geographical data, educational material and cultural content. The Commission believes that "this will help to overcome the specific problems which arise in Europe, which stem from the high level of fragmentation in content markets".
Unlike other distribution media, Internet has the upper hand in overcoming obstacles such as the format of the content and national boundaries. Consensus exists in economic and political circles that the supply of quality content and their inclusion in new services are important factors in stimulating the demand for broadband and mobile communication. In Europe, however, potential suppliers and consumers of content are still faced with considerable complications. Legal requirements differ from one Member State to another, as do technical, cultural and administrative practices, and even the language. Despite the fact that a directive on the re-use of public sector information was adopted on 17 November 2003, the fragmentation problem remains, because the Member States gather and store data in different ways; this is particularly true of geographical data (such as geographic co-ordinates, post codes, town-planning details and land registration) present in up to 80% of public sector information. This situation complicates the creation of information services making use of data at Community level, and slows the development of services in fields such as transport, navigation, agriculture, emergency response and environmental management. According to the Commission, there is also the risk to restricting the development of mobile services connected to data transmission.
The availability of educational content, the results of scientific and university research and cultural content also depends on the ease with which content providers can get round obstacles which stem from the multiplicity of languages and digital rights regimes. The accession of new Member States to the EU makes it even more urgently necessary to tackle these issues, stresses the Commission. It believes that the new programme will help to meet some of these challenges. Its main objective is to allow information from different systems to be combined independently of their format, language and location, and tailored to the needs of the user. It will encourage the use of the latest technologies by public and private stakeholders, to marshal Europe's information assets and make them available to all.