The European Commission published A Digital Agenda for Europe, its new 5-year strategy for the ICT sector, on 18 May 2010. EMF has reviewed and discussed it internally. It now releases a position paper with its comments and contributions to the debate.

EMF broadly supports the Commission's proposed strategy. However, in a few areas, EMF would like to see a shift in emphasis. Amongst a raft of proposals, here are a few significant excerpts:

• The Commission should channel a substantial part of its R&D resources through a tender-based approach towards the collaborative procurement of key building blocks of the electronic service infrastructure.
• As long as Europe is not a single market, standardisation is essential to overcome fragmentation.
• Stronger enforcement of anti-spam rules against industrial-scale spammers is necessary on a scale comparable to the anti-piracy and anti-counterfeiting activities.
• Online operators that are collecting private data of whichever sort and in whichever manner on their users should be required to adhere to a strict transparency rule.
• EMF is concerned that a large investment is committed to broadband networks without a commensurate effort on the development of content, services and applications of European origin and value.
• In order to ensure "an improved uptake and dissemination of research results” (of EU-funded projects), it appears to be of critical importance not only to include partners with appropriate expertise in development, dissemination and exploitation, but to ensure that their role and influence in R&D projects is not secondary.
• In view of the current economic situation, there is an urgent need to show to the citizen what the return on the investment of public money is.
• (With regard to e-Skills), the real challenge appears not merely to lie in churning out more highly skilled technicians, but in drastically increasing the digital (ICT & media) literacy of the average population. 
• Language training (at all levels) and investment in language technologies should become a major European asset/challenge. Europe must overcome the fragmentation of its own markets and arm its workforce for the penetration of foreign markets by making multilingualism a top priority.

Read the full text of the EMF position paper on A Digital Agenda for Europe

More News