This ambitious project intends to use information technology in order to make procurement more efficient and facilitate access to information, in particular for SMEs. The Internet already allows companies to learn about and react to tender announcements from behind their own computer screen, but we need to develop such systems further with the active participation of the private sector, both developers of applications and communication networks and the suppliers who will need to use the new procedures. We also need to cooperate closely with our main trading partners to ensure different electronic procurement systems do not create new trade barriers and are mutually compatible. However, awareness programmes, skills, funding possibilities and new public procurement methods are not sufficient in themselves to get entrepreneurs to take the commercial risk of moving into this electronic trading environment. Without legal certainty on the relevant international networks, electronic commerce could remain a peripheral form of commercial activity in the world.
Electronic commerce is de facto an international market phenomenon.
If, as we all agree, its development is to be market driven, there must be a coherent regulatory framework worldwide. Appropriate regulation encourages investment by protecting the general interest objectives that are the foundations for trust in any marketplace. The regulatory framework must ensure that irrespective of where the firm is located or where the consumer makes his order both parties can rely on equivalent protection and redress compared with any other firm or consumer in the market. At the European level this is not new. It is after all the ethos of a Single Market where companies and consumers are treated equally whatever their nationality.