[FYI] Feedback to eEurope mailbox

["Axel H Horns" <horns@t-online.de>]

CORDIS RTD-NEWS/© European Communities, 2000.  

Record Control Number: 14393  

Date: 2000-02-28  

Category: General policy  

General Information:  

Less than 200 responses were received by the eEurope mailbox in 
response to an invitation from the Information Society Directorate-
General to comment on the action lines proposed by the eEurope 
initiative.  

The analysis concludes: 'General responses to the initiative 
supported its aims and underlined the need for political leadership 
from the top'.  

Commission officials were pleased to receive responses from most 
applicant countries showing 'the Countries of Eastern and Central 
Europe to be enthusiastic to benefit from the new economy.' However 
the overall number of responses received was fairly low, perhaps 
owing to the novelty of the mailbox system and low Internet 
penetration in several Member States.  

The inputs to the mailbox did underline the need for an improvement 
in electronic access to public information. The most frequent topic 
was the difficulty in downloading the eEurope documents, and the 
eEurope team are looking at ways to address this.  

Comments were received an all action lines including education, 
Internet access, e-commerce, research networks, smart cards, risk 
capital, eParticpation, healthcare online, intelligent transport and 
government online.  

Regarding e-commerce, many industrialists recommended speeding up of 
the introduction of the e-commerce regulatory framework, and 
developing non-regulatory or co-regulatory options.  

Consumer organisations stressed the need to develop structures to 
encourage consumer confidence and called for greater emphasis on 
standardisation.  

Data Source Provider: Information Society Directorate-General  

Document Reference: Based on analysis of the first round of feedback 
to the eEurope mailbox  

Programme Acronym: FRAMEWORK 5C; IST  

Subject Index Codes: Information Processing, Information Systems  

Contact Person:  

A full account of the analysis of the first round of feedback to the 
eEurope mailbox can be found at: 
http://europa.eu.int/comm/information_society/eeurope/mailbox_en.htm. 

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