EN Official Journal of the European Union CE 84/875

(2004/C 84 E/0969)

WRITTEN QUESTION P-0767/04

by Brian Crowley (UEN) to the Commission

(4 March 2004)

Subject: eEurope 2005 Action Plan

Discussions are currently taking place with regard to the implementation of the eEurope 2005 Action Plan.

Will the Commission make a statement regarding the guarantees that will be included in this Plan to ensure that cultural and linguistic diversities will be protected at all times within the framework of the implementation of this programme, and can the Commission provide guarantees that the benefits of new and evolving information technologies will be extended to both rural and urban areas and equally to peripheral areas within the EU?

Answer given by Mr Liikanen on behalf of the Commission

(2 April 2004)

The Commission would like to reaffirm the importance it attaches to maintaining linguistic and cultural diversity. The information society can reinforce diversity and allow a wide range of services to be offered in locai languages and meeting specific local needs. The eEurope 2005 Action Plan aims to promote the development of services applications and content and the Commission believes that this will make a major contribution to ensuring that European culture at all levels can flourish.

The question refers to the ongoing discussions on the implementation of eEurope. This is the mid-term review which was planned to ensure that the action plan, agreed by 15 Member States at the Seville European Council (21/22 June 2002) is appropriate for an enlarged EU of 25 members. The Commission undertook a survey of Member States and Acceding Countries at the end of 2003 and the general response was that eEurope is a valuable programme and its objectives do not need to be adjusted. This represents a vote of confidence from across Europe in the strategy and objectives of eEurope which include linguistic and cultural diversity and ensuring an information society for all, including urban, rural and peripheral areas.

eEurope is an umbrella covering a wide range of actions and programmes and one of the most important in relation to diversity is the eContent programme. This programme supports the increased availability, use and distribution of European digital content. It aims at improving access for all to high-quality digital content on the global networks, in a multiplicity of languages. A work programme for the years 2003 and 2004 was adopted by the Commission on 19 December 2002 with an expected budget of EUR 26,5 million in 2004.

The Commission has also proposed a new programme, eContentplus (2005-2008) which will support the development of multi-lingual content for innovative, on-line services across the EU. The new programme focuses on three areas: geographical data, educational material and cultural content, and aims at seeking to support the combination of information from different systems — irrespective of format, language or location.

As regards the question on ensuring the benefits of technology to all areas, the Commission has taken steps to allocate resources to areas potentially missed out. The eEurope 2005 Action Plan indicates the need for Europe to have widespread availability of broadband access at competitive prices. Although investment in broadband will mainly come from the private sector, the Action Plan proposes to support deployment in less favoured areas. To this end, the Commission published a Staff Working Paper giving ‘Guidelines on the criteria and modalities of the use of structural funds in electronic communications’ (1). The purpose of these guidelines is to help Member States and regions prepare their electronic communications infrastructure projects (including broadband) for presentation for European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) support.

(1) SEC(2003)895.