Introduction

Mr. Chairman, Ministers, Ladies and Gentlemen,

First of all I would like to apologize on behalf of Commissioner Bangemann for not being able to attend this conference. Also, thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to present the European's Commission point of view about relevant issues regarding the development of the global Information Society.

Since the first ITU Development Conference in Buenos Aires in 1994, the telecommunication sector in Europe and elsewere has been undergoing profound changes.

We all have to face the challenge of creating the conditions for a balanced development of telecommunications and to allow developing countries to play their role in the global Information Society.

The European Union is interested to intensify the dialogue with the developing countries in order to jointly benefit from the economic and social opportunities which the Global Information Society is offering.

On the occasion of an International Conference in Midrand in May 1996 we started the dialogue with developing countries on Information Society issues.

My Commissioner wishes to continue this dialogue during the African Telecom 1998 Forum, held in May in Johannesburg.

As part of our commitment to the developing countries, the European Commission has spent more than 350 million ECU in grants for the restructuring of telecommunications operators, and the European Bank of Investment has paid nearly 2 billion ECU in loans, since 1982.

Information will increasingly be an indispensible "means of production" in the next century.

Therefore, global information- and communications-networks will be the most important infrastructure for economic development.

This means: Access to this infrastructure and the global availability of information and data is essential for future international competitiveness.

Consequently, telecommunications policy and the development of global networks are modern economic and industrial policy.

Industrial policy in this sense is far away from the political approach of the 70s and 80s. At that time industrial policy very often was equated with state intervention and public subvention.

It will not come as a surprise that we had long and controversial discussions throughout Europe, in particular in Germany and Great Britain, when the European Commission started to launch its new policy approach.

• to improve the entrepreneurial environment

• to ameliorate general market conditions in the EU (e.g. by realising the Internal Market)

• to generate optimal conditions for R&D

• to intensify international co-operation on governmental and industry level in order to "open" the access to third markets.

Meanwhile there is no serious critic anymore about the necessity and the success of this approach:

The main pre-condition for the modernised concept was the liberalisation of telecom-markets.

We have gained a lot of experiences in Europe, during the preparatory phase which took some years to complete.

The breaking up of well protected national public monopolies and replacing them with competition was a major political challenge.

We are glad to say: We succeeded. From 1^st January 1998 we have fully liberalised telecom-markets except for minor derogations for a few countries.

One of our most important experiences is the fact that those countries which were very reluctant at the beginning, made particular strong efforts because they realized that their economies as a whole really benefit only when their telecom sectors are liberalized early, rather then late.

So, we know very well the resistance, the problems, not to say the fear of some governments, industry and citizens with regard to liberalisation and deregulation.

But the fact that we overcome these barriers and that we have come to a common regulatory framework for the telecom-markets encourage us to support all efforts towards a competitive environment.

The Commission is very active in promoting international co-operation on governmental and industrial level in the field of telecom.

E.g. with Central and Eastern Europe, the Mediterranean region, Africa, Latin-America and Asia.

One of the most important developments in the field of telecommunication was the successful conclusion of the WTO agreement on basic telecommunications services in February last year.

Because of its importance the European Community and its Member States are actively engaged in ensuring the proper and timely implementation of the WTO/GATS agreement, not only by the EU Member States but also by our trading partners.

We strongly encourage ITU Member States which are also members of the WTO to improve their commitments on basic telecommunications services, or to make commitments if they have not yet done so.

We also encourage non-WTO countries to apply the WTO principles when establishing a new regulatory and licensing framework, as well as to consider applying for WTO membership.

The successful implementation will be a main pre-condition for new investments, for new services, and for overall economic growth.

While industry is already "playing on the global marketplace" politics often is lagging behind.

Information Society issues are, by definition, global ones.

That is why we have to recognize that the relevant level to deal with a lot of these issues is no more national not even European, but global.

A lot of valuable work is already done in a lot of international organisations like WTO, OECD, WIPO, ITU, but also by means of bilateral agreements.

Unavoidably this implies from time to time overlapping activities, or gaps.

Mr. Bangemann has recently identified these Information Society issues as a matter of political priority that has to be dealt with on a global level, particularly those concerning electronic commerce.

At first sight we are thinking of questions regarding:

• Taxation and custom duties:

The question of how taxes and tariffs should be applied and implemented to electronic commerce is a major issue. For instance, the impact of electronic commerce in the area of indirect taxation needs to be examined.

• Liability:

A main question e.g. is how the provider of services and / or goods can be clearly identified and located by the consumer, and which national law is applicable.

• Privacy and consumer protection:

Current differences in the protection of personal data could hinder the development of cross boarder electronic trade in the absence of an agreed international framework.

• Intellectual property:

Technology allows intellectual property to be copied and transmitted worldwide with relative ease. As a result, different levels of legal protection in different countries are a crucial for the projected growth of creative content industries to ensure adequate protection for the rights of authors and users in the electronic environment.

• Illegal and harmful contents:

The wide accessibility of content of all kinds also raises issues of public interest with numerous social and cultural, as well as economic implications.

Differences in national or regional cultures and moral and ethical codes also give rise to divergent national laws. In the on-line economy, this may lead to situations where a site may contain what one nation regards as indecent or unethical, whilst the same content may be considered legal elsewhere.

• Security and authentication:

The on-line commerce requires new agreements also regarding aspects of security. Measures will need to provide legal security and trust in the medium.

The absence of harmonised approach to Certification Authorities which can verify the identity of correspondents could seriously undermine the development of cross border trade.

• Internet governance:

This is not only a technical question regarding the domain name system, and how to organise addresses on Internet. It is also an important issue in decision making which affects evolution of Internet as a whole.

Some of the above issues are dealt with in different international organisations, by means of bilateral or multi-national agreements, or by some initial forms of self-regulation. However, they are partly uncoordinated and thus diverging solutions are discussed in different places.

Therefore, first of all we have to identify who does what, and how increased synergy can be achieved through better coordination.

So: we recognise the work developed by the existing international organisations in relation to the networked economy, and we need to build on their experiences.

In a first phase we might bring together policy guidelines or principles already established by international agreements or treaties.

We might even be able to go a little bit further by agreeing on the political priority issues, on the most appropriate mechanisms to solve them, and on the entities which can implement and enforce them effectively in a co-ordinated way at global level.

Where regulation is necessary, it should be as light as possible.

We would also like to see private sector leadership in assisting development of the global framework, in particular in the identification of new policy issues which arise out of technological developments, and we support industry self-regulation as an integral part of policy development.

We want this issue industry driven.

We invite the international community to work together to explore ways to develop consistent approaches to the many legal, technical, commercial, and policy issues raised by globalisation and the Information Society.

In this sense we propose trading partners, international organisations and in particular industry to shape together what we call an International Charter through an open consensus-building process.

The Charter therefore should be seen as a political declaration expressing the importance and urgency of certain issues.

This Charter would provide guidance in new policy questions which arise.

We would very welcome the full participation of all countries in this project and we wish you all to be fully involved in the next steps :

• Representatives from the private sector will be invited to come forward with their proposals and recommendations, in particular on consensus-building and self-regulation mechanisms.

• We continue the discussions with our partners during forthcoming conferences.

• We would like to bring together the proposals from industry and the views from governments and international organisations by means of an international conference, which would agree on how we jointly address new communications policy issues in this fast moving world of communication and information technology.

This initiative of Commissioner Bangemann is proof of Europe's willingness to play an active international role.

The European Union is convinced that there is no alternative to a global approach and to global coordination regarding Information Society issues if we want to exploit the full economic, technological and social potential of the Information Society.

We very much hope that with launching the debate about an International Communication Charter we "throw a stone in the water" in the sense that the proposals ripple through all players of industry and government in order to initiate new concensus-building.

Thank you very much for your attention.