No C 263/10 Official Journal of the European Communities 20. 10. 86 
(Article 3 (1)) and present goods to customs in a certain 
way (Article 5) should be permitted not only in the case 
of tourist and frontier traffic but also in the case of 
letter and parcel post. In this way it would be possible 
to preserve the autonomous rules of Member States and 
avoid economic and administrative complications. In 
fact although Article 11 permits, in the case of letter 
and parcel post, derogations from the obligation to 
lodge a summary declaration, it does not provide for 
derogations from the requirements on specific routes 
and customs presentation. 
2.3. Article 7 (c) 
Article 7 (c) provides for exonerations in the case of 
goods moving under the transit procedure. In the view 
of the Committee exonerations should also be extended 
to a number of cases not falling within the transit 
procedure, e.g. to goods carried directly through the 
customs territory of the Community by rail, post, air 
and sea. Should these types of carriage not be exoner­
ated also, the moving of goods through the customs 
territory of the EEC would become unnecessarily cum­
bersome, even though there is no need for customs 
supervision in such cases. The same exonerations 
should apply in the case of goods carried through 
the customs territory of the EEC in customs-approved 
pipelines, provided that the person responsible for the 
Done at Brussels, 2 July 1986. 
1. Introduction 
1.1. The present work programme for creating a 
common information market is a continuation of exist­
ing Community policy, which dates back in principle 
to the resolution of the Council of Ministers of 24 carriage keeps records and complies with the other rules 
on customs supervision laid down by the competent 
customs authority. 
2.4. Articles 9 and 10 
The Committee notes that the Commission intends to 
define the term 'summary declaration' more precisely 
by using the phrase 'which contains the particulars 
necessary for identification of the goods' currently used 
in Article 10. 
2.5. Article 23 
The Committee takes it for granted that once the transit 
procedure has been completed, a 'summary declaration' 
may be replaced within the terms of Article 10 by a 
transit document. To demand that a further document 
be presented to customs in addition to the transit docu­
ment already required under transit law would entail 
unnecessary bureaucracy. 
The Chairman 
of the Economic and Social Committee 
June 1971 on the promotion of the supply and use of 
information by means of coordinated measures taken 
by the Community and the Member States. 
1.2. Following this resolution the Council approved 
three consecutive three-year action programmes for the Gerd MUHR 
Opinion on the Commission communication to the Council on the work programme for 
creating a common information market 
(86/C 263/05) 
On 27 January 1986, the Commission of the European Communities decided to consult the 
Economic and Social Committee on the communication from the Commission to the Council 
entitled 'Work programme for creating a common information market'. 
On 25 February 1986 the Committee's Bureau put the Section for Industry, Commerce, Crafts 
and Services in charge of this work, while asking the Section for Social Questions to draw 
up a supplementary opinion in accordance with Article 23 of the Committee's Rules of 
Procedure. 
The Section for Industry, Commerce, Crafts and Services adopted its opinion on 4 June 1986. 
The rapporteur was Mr Nierhaus. 
At its 238th plenary session (meeting of 2 July 1986) the Committee adopted the following 
opinion unanimously: 
20. 10. 86 Official Journal of 
Community in the field of scientific and technical infor­
mation and documentation. This series of programmes 
expired at the end of 1983. 
1.3. At the end of 1983 the Commission submitted 
a proposal for a Council Decision on a Community 
programme for the development of the specialized 
information market in Europe (COM(83) 661). 
1.4. The programme came into effect on 1 January 
1984 and is to run for a period of five years. 
1.5. In document COM(83) 661 the Commission 
noted that such individual programmes could not take 
account of the much broader, general political aspects 
of the information market. It therefore announced that 
it would be submitting a separate communication to 
the Council at a lager stage, which would establish a 
basis for a coherent European Community information 
policy. 
1.6. The Committee issued an opinion on document 
COM(83) 661 in early 1984 (!). The basic comments on 
the establishment of a European information market 
set out in that opinion are still applicable and may 
therefore be used for supplementary reference. 
1.7. The present work programme is therefore not a 
single programme with fixed budgetary appropriations 
relating to particular projects. Instead, the longer-term 
objectives of European Community policy with regard 
to the creation of a common information market are 
explained and spelt out in relation to the various 
aspects, after which the measures .to be taken are set 
out along with the dates by which they are likely to be 
implemented. 
1.8. The Committee considers that the proposed pro­
cedure is both appropriate and necessary as in the 
current situation the most promising course of action 
is not the provision of direct financial aid for individual 
projects, such as the development of particular data 
banks, but rather the improvement of the basic political 
conditions. The technical, economic and legal con­
ditions at both national and Community level must be 
improved, if not created, before the Community can 
compete seriously with, say, the information markets 
of the United States of America and Japan. 
1.9. An important prerequisite is the readiness of 
people to make appropriate use of existing possibilities 
for disseminating information with the aid of new 
technology. The necessary knowledge and skills must 
be provided in the early stages of school education and 
vocational training. 
1.10. Given the natural language barriers in the 
Community which cannot readily be broken down and 
which make access to information systems in other 
European Community Member States considerably 
more difficult, the Committee does, however, consider European Communities No C 263/11 
it doubtful from an overall point of view that the United 
States of America — the leader in terms of size on the 
world information market — can be caught up with at 
all. At all events it will require considerable efforts — 
and especially a determined will on the part of the 
Member States to achieve greater integration in the 
technological, economic,~social and legal fields — if 
this key problem is to be solved and thus significant 
progress is to be made within the proposed time limit. 
2. General comments 
2.1. The Committee agrees with the Commission 
that if politicians, economists and scientists are to work 
efficiently, it is more and more important that they 
have ready access to the specialist information they 
require. Although information was always important 
to business activity, the explosive growth in this field 
has made information a factor of production in its own 
right alongside labour, land and capital. This makes it 
all the more important for small- and medium-sized 
businesses and the less-developed regions of the Com­
munity to have greater access to information so that 
they are not put at an even greater disadvantage. 
2.2. The growing increase in the volumes of infor­
mation available and required, the increasing speed 
with which information becomes obsolete and the 
greater flow of information between countries are such 
that the traditional information media, in particular the 
print media, are unable to cope. The development of 
new information and communications technologies 
offers a way out but this is only likely to prove success­
ful if the existing obstacles described in the work pro­
gramme are systematically removed with the cooper­
ation of all the national and Community authorities 
involved. 
2.3. The development of a high-capacity European 
network of on-line information services therefore 
depends on a solution being found to the technological 
problems (extension of the transmission networks, 
hardware and software compatibility) and the economic 
and social problems posed by the rapid development of 
information technologies. 
2.4. In the Committee's view earlier European Com­
munity programmes in this field, particularly the 
abovementioned programme on the development of the 
specialized information market in Europe and similar 
programmes such as Esprit, Caddia, RACE and Insis, 
provide subsidiary assistance which must, however, be 
backed up by development work at national level and 
consolidated by still closer Community-wide cooper­
ation. 
2.5. This is the context in which the initial work 
programme submitted by the Commission and generally 
supported by the Committee should be seen. 
3. Specific comments 
(!) OJ No C 140, 23. 5. 1984. 3.1. An essential prerequisite for the establishment 
of high-capacity on-line information services is the 
No C 263/12 Official Journal of the European Communities 20. 10. 86 
existence of a system of closely linked public trans­
mission networks which extend beyond frontiers. High 
transmission speeds combined with low transmission 
costs are vital if the services are to score a success with 
professional users. The Committee would therefore re-
emphasize that the development of integrated service 
digital networks (ISDN) by the national postal auth­
orities and the standardization of these networks on the 
basis of uniform and, wherever possible, international 
data-transmission protocols are matters of prime 
importance. How important it is, for development of 
the specialist information market in the Community, 
to give priority to questions of standardization becomes 
clear in this context. 
3.1.1. In its earlier opinion on the Insis pro­
gramme (!) the Committee underlined that it was vital 
to develop this infrastructure if the exchange of infor­
mation at national and international levels were to be 
improved, and pointed out that its usefulness would 
therefore extend far beyond the framework of the Insis 
programme. 
3.2. It is above all essential to meet the technical 
specifications which will enable users who are not infor­
mation specialists to have easier access to information 
in the various data banks at different locations in the 
EEC (see the abovementioned ESC opinion on the Insis 
programme). In this context the Committee would draw 
attention once again to the need to develop easy-to-
operate high-capacity terminals based on international 
standards. 
3.3. The Committee considers that State aid for 
national specialist information services is not bound to 
lead to a general weakening of Europe's position in the 
international market provided that particular con­
ditions are met, such as: 
— the establishment of the basic technical, economic 
and legal conditions to enable unrestricted on-line 
access to data bases across frontiers, 
— favourably priced means of transmission for inter­
national traffic, 
— competition between services from the quality 
angle, 
— coordinated distribution of tasks, 
— the exchange of data between national services at 
European or worldwide level, provided that this 
does not conflict with competitive considerations. 
3.4. A major problem which is characteristic of the 
Community and is standing in the way of the creation 
of a uniform information market is the wide range of 
languages used and the difficulties which this produces. 
The Committee sees this as a key problem which will 
have to be solved as a matter or priority. 
(!) OJNoC44, 15.2. 1985. 
Done at Brussels, 2 July 1986. 3.5. The Committee particularly welcomes the Com­
mission's plan to stimulate demand in the public sector 
and amongst other categories of users, in particular 
small businesses, the education sector and disadvan­
taged peripheral regions. The Committee expects the 
Commission to submit concrete programmes in these 
fields as part of its work programme. 
3.6. The current document submitted by the Com­
mission is unable to provide answers to a number of 
fundamental problems relating to the development of 
the European information market, such as: 
— the loss of jobs as a result of the concentration of 
decentralized data banks, 
— the impact on school and vocational training objec­
tives, 
— the growing dependence of information services 
(problems in the event of breakdowns), 
— the protection of personal data (e.g. medical reports, 
results of individual tests), 
— the relation between generally accessible infor­
mation and information protected by copyright or 
in other ways, 
— the social value of the various information sectors 
(e.g. environmental protection). 
The Committee therefore expects these matters to be 
tackled within the proposed work programme without 
delay. 
3.7. A further important requirement, however, is 
the effective coordination of the proposed individual 
measures in the light of the overall goal, namely the 
development of an efficient and internationally com­
petitive specialist information market. The appoint­
ment of an advisory group of senior officials is therefore 
supported. In view of the comprehensive and complex 
nature of the problems involved the Committee pro­
poses that representatives of users and social groups be 
involved in continually coordinating the work pro­
gramme's projects. 
3.8. The Committee also proposes that the Commit­
tee for Scientific and Technical Information and Docu­
mentation (CSTID) be involved in the technical coordi­
nation of the proposed measures in order to take advan­
tage of the experience which this body had gained 
over many years in the technical implementation of 
programmes in this field. 
The Chairman 
of the Economic and Social Committee 
Gerd MUHR