Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the I congratulate all the rapporteurs on reports that in my view are relevant for the development of eEurope and an information society for all. With regard to the Van Velzen report there are two things I would like to stress. Re-use and commercial exploitation of public information, as proposed by the rapporteur, will lead to a real information society for all. Where basic information such as the wording of acts and jurisprudence is concerned, this must be made available to the European citizen free of charge. After all, as a taxpayer he or she has already paid for this information. We do not allow our citizens to pay for the same thing twice. Furthermore, good information is necessary for the functioning of a democratic constitutional state. In my opinion we as a Parliament must fight hard for the rights of the citizens. Public information must therefore be made available to the citizens free of charge or at marginal cost for reproduction and distribution. As a group we fully support the line of rapporteur Van Velzen. This brings me to my second point. Some Members are in favour of allowing certain government institutions to charge a reasonable return on investment because their income comes in part from the publication of their data, such as weather forecasts or maps. Of course this is possible where added value is a factor. There is provision for this in the exceptions. The unthinking inclusion in the directive of allowing a reasonable return on investment to be made seems highly dangerous to me. Because the question is, what is reasonable? Is it 10, 20 or 30% profit and do our citizens have to pay that? It is also important that the same conditions prevail in all the Member States. Subsidiarity in this case is fundamentally wrong. This is because we need a level playing field, only then can the internal market for public information be achieved. To go through that last point: this directive must promote the reuse and the exploitation of public information. The government must therefore act as a booster, that is as a launching customer, to make this information available at low cost to give small and medium-sized businesses the opportunity to exploit this information so that a good market develops for it, as in the United States. Because a market that is controlled by monopolists as now does not lead to more jobs and greater prosperity. Turning now to 3G. It has already been said that the transfer of billions from the private sector to the public sector has been disastrous for the mobile telecoms sector. This means that we do not need to impose any unnecessary regulation now. Intervention may however be necessary to guarantee competition. Even then though we must ensure a level playing field. No unilateral measures by Member States to lighten the load of the mobile operators. We cannot have a situation in which France gives discounts on licences and other Member States renew licences. I think that the Commission must bring forward clear measures to guarantee that level playing field. Finally, a word about the Khanbhai and Paasilinna reports, because they make a contribution to the eEurope that we here in the Parliament favour, to ensure that citizens and businesses can profit fully from the information society. This has happened too little to date. It is true that in Lisbon in 2000 we agreed that we must be the most competitive and dynamic knowledge economy in 2010, but these appear to be nothing more than fine words that require urgent conversion into deeds. In practice it seems that over and over again the Member States are falling back on their own national hobby horses, be it a question of the European patent or of access to public information. That is why it is good that the Commission is keeping its finger on the pulse and keeping the minds of the leaders of the Member States on the matter. The basic principles are excellent, but when it comes to the implementation of the applications, such as e-health, e-government and e-learning, then it is shameful to see what is actually happening. I wish us all, Parliament and Commission, success in the realisation of a better eEurope.

Political group: ELDR