The awareness and confidence of consumers and businesses needs to be enhanced, and support is needed for the development of relevant skills and widespread network literacy. SMEs, in particular, need to be encouraged to adopt new business methods, techniques and innovations. Public administrations have an important role to play by adopting a favourable attitude to electronic commerce. The Commission will prepare a Communication on the consumer dimension of the Information Society which will aim to promote consumer access to the Information Society, including new consumer skills which will require special education and training. Consumers need to have confidence in the electronic commerce process itself.
Industry can also increase the level of trust by adopting and abiding by codes of conduct.
Ideally, labelling and codes of conduct would need to be applied at a European or global level to win mass acceptance amongst consumers and businesses and avoid the creation of new barriers. The Commission encourages the creation of widely accepted quality labels and codes of conduct to increase trust and confidence in electronic commerce. For consumers, the use of the Euro and electronic commerce should simplify and lower the cost of transactions. The Commission will therefore encourage pilot work on quality labels for electronic payments in the future. The financial industry, consumer representatives and public authorities would together define these criteria.