Also, it is important that regulators at both national and European level ensure that there is no monopoly on any technical platform for accessing the Internet and conducting e-commerce. LLU of itself does not add to the nation's physical telecommunications infrastructure and we need to encourage investment in new technologies and new network infrastructures to become a genuinely broadband society. Therefore, we need to develop various new forms of e-cash including smart cards. The European Commission has encouraged the development of such organisations and schemes with funding in part or whole for the specific projects, but we believe that too often the approval of such Commission funding is too slow and too bureaucratic. Within these national totals, we see wide variations in the proportion of companies operating transactional web sites and the percentage of consumers making online transactions.
Education is an important factor in cultural attitudes to new technologies.
Also, the media has a role to play here and we would encourage bodies like the BBC to run innovative programming around the e-commerce message. The European Parliament has gone some way to addressing what we believe is a serious weakness and omission in the original eEurope document, namely the lack of attention to employment issues. Fears around such issues could prove to be a brake on the rapid deployment of e-commerce initiatives. Therefore, the European Commission needs to sponsor research, develop case studies, and promote best practice in the development of e-commerce. Furthermore, it needs to promote social dialogue between employer and employee representatives at all levels, including most crucially at enterprise level.