Mister Chairman,

Ladies and Gentlemen:

I am honoured to represent Romania at the second stage of the World Summit on the Information Society. It is a pleasure for me, personally, and for the entire Romanian delegation to be here, in Tunisia – a country whose generosity made it possible for us to meet and debate topical issues on how to turn the virtual information society into a real one.

Ladies and Gentlemen:

"All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and consciousness and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. [... ] Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person. [...] Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers" These fundamental rights are stated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; here and now it is high-time to reinforce this statement.

The Romanian government strongly believes that today people have one more unalienable right: the right to information, the right to be able to access information and to use it for personal fulfilment and for a greater good. We, as government, should provide all necessary tools for granting people the opportunity of making the most of the modern information and communication technologies.

We are all here today because we must define another important birth certificate for a new society. Romania is here because we are fully aware of the shift our world made and of the high speed journey we need to make towards the Information Society.

The ICT sector in Romania has reached a development rate pace that most of the countries are only hoping for: 21%. Today, Romania boasts figures like a 4 billion euro ICT market, 115,000 .ro domains, 24% internet users, 2,500,000 PCs registered. By encouraging the wide use of information technologies and consolidating the ICT industry the Government steadily pursues the aim of increasing the competitiveness of the Romanian economy and of improving the efficiency of the public administration, to the greater comfort of the citizens. You may see samples of the results of these efforts at the Romanian stand. Romania is present here with over 75 representatives, the second largest delegation at WSIS, not only for presenting the successful projects, but also to receive a worthy recognition of our endeavours: a World Summit Award for an e-learning solution, developed by a private company in joint venture with the Romanian government.

The mission of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology in Romania is to create the proper context for the development of the Information Society. And we do so by designing and implementing projects to complete the transition to the information society and to ensure a transparent, equidistant, safe and open frame that shall provide better public services to the Romanian citizens through ICTs.

For the next three years, among the priorities of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology there are: the implementation of the ICT in the public administration; to render the public administration efficient and flexible; to support and develop ICT projects for the SMEs. The implementation of ICT under the conditions set by the open standards and the interoperability of the local and central public administration is a major task.

Another important goal is to expand the access to communications services all around Romania by setting up Public Access Points that should allow access to the public network of telephony (PSTN) and to Internet in the localities with poor communications facilities.

Mesdames et messieurs,

Thank you.