Neelie Kroes, Commissioner for the Digital Agenda
The Declaration of Granada on the European Digital Agenda lays the foundations of Europe’s digital future and will form a key element of the EU’s 2020 strategy, which is due to be approved in June.
She couldn’t be there in person, but speaking over a video link, the European Commissioner for the Digital Agenda Neelie Kroes, welcomed the declaration, calling it, “a milestone, a crucial building block” in delivering the information and communications technologies needed to underpin economic growth in the future.
The declaration highlights what needs to be done to overcome technological and legal barriers that are preventing, or slowing down, the creation of a single digital market.
The benefits that might flow from this were highlighted by the fact that video links allowed the declaration to be endorsed, even though only four of the ministers were physically present in Granada.
The declaration lists 29 actions, divided into eight areas, that the ministers consider important. It calls, for example, for concrete steps to be taken to meet a target of 100 per cent coverage of basic broadband by 2013, and wide take-up of high-speed broadband by 2020.
The Spanish Industry Minister Miguel Sebastián, who chaired the meeting, highlighted the idea of having an electronic European ID number. This he said is an objective as ambitious, “as the euro was in its day,” and would allow a surge in electronic commerce and support greater interoperability of services across the EU. He stressed that at present the majority of commercial Internet transactions in Europe take place within the confines of national boundaries.
The need to remove regulatory obstacles for cross-border transactions and for common legislation against piracy is also included in the declaration. As Commissioner Kroes put it, “For the moment one could almost say that the only existing Digital Single Market for audiovisual material is the illegal one. People are able to access content EU-wide but only through illegal file-sharing, whereas much content from other member states is not on offer at all. I am convinced that creating the legal Digital Single Market will lead to a wealth of options [being] available to citizens.”
The eight central themes of the declaration are:
Infrastructures
Advanced use of the open internet, security and trust
Digital User Rights
Digital Single Market
Public Digital Services
Strengthening the Competitiveness of Europe's ICT sector
International dimension of the Digital Agenda
Measuring progress/Benchmarking Information Society
The full text of the Granada Declaration is available here: http://www.eu2010.es/export/sites/presidencia/comun/descargas/Ministerios/en_declaracion_granada.pdf
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