Strasbourg, 27/04/2004 (Agence Europe) - by adopting in first reading on 22 April the report by W.G. van Velzen (EPP-ED, Netherlands), the European Parliament has approved the most part of the "e-Contentplus" programme presented by the European Commission but adopted a series of amendments based mainly on the budgetary and financial provisions.
"eContentplus" is a market oriented programme aimed at supporting production, use and distribution of European digital content and the promotion of linguistic and cultural diversity in international networks. It supports innovative and viable contents projects that involve multinational and inter-sector partnerships. Accompaniment measures focusing on best practices, concertation, raising awareness and diffusion, as well as market studies on perspectives, challenges and possibilities, which are also being presented.
Media convergence and the global Internet have given digital content a lucrative potential, but its development in Europe still comes up against obstacles (the large number of languages, cultures and practice in administrations and enterprise), which have an impact on the establishment of crossborder European services based on digital content. The Commission wished to take these realities into account in "e-Contentplus", which aims to heighten "e-Content" by proposing rules aimed at: - facilitating access to European digital content; - improving quality by allowing implementation of best practices; - and heightening cooperation and awareness between actors of the digital content sector.
The Parliament wished to clarify the aims of the programme while accepting the Commission's proposal in its principle. It nonetheless adopted a series of amendments. The most impoortant calls for annual funding for the period 2005-2008 to be authorised by the budgetary authority within the limit of the financial perspectives. The EP also amended the article on follow-up and evaluation to take into account the fact that the programme on digital content extends over and beyond current financial perspectives and in order to take every possible advantage of the evaluations foreseen for the programme. The text was amended with regard to financial provisions to correspond more to the text of the interinstituional agreement on budgetary discipline and improved budgetary procedure.