Before i2010: eEurope initiative
The European Commission launched the eEurope initiative
in 2000 with the aim of accelerating Europe's transition towards a
knowledge based economy and to realise the potential benefits of higher
growth, more jobs and better access for all citizens to the new services
of the information age.
The first phase of eEurope was the eEurope 2002 Action
Plan which focused on exploiting the advantages offered by the Internet
and therefore on increasing connectivity. It comprised a total of 64
targets to be achieved by end 2002. The majority of those were
successfully completed and in June 2002 the European Council launched a
second phase, the eEurope 2005 Action Plan, which focused on exploiting
broadband technologies to deliver online services in both the public and
private sector. eEurope was not a public expenditure programme and did
not make new funds available. It rather provided a policy framework
within which existing expenditure, such as the 6th Framework Programme
for Research, the eTEN or the Structural Funds, could be better focused.
The eEurope initiative finished at the end of 2005 and was followed by
the i2010 initiative.
eEurope 2005
In June 2002, the Seville European Council gave a broad political
endorsement to the
eEurope 2005 Action Plan which was then adopted by the Council in
December 2002:
eEurope 2005: An information society for all - An Action Plan
eEurope 2005 was based on the recognition that high speed
connectivity (broadband) stimulates the use of the Internet by making it
possible to use more developed applications and services. eEurope 2005 set
out to create more favourable conditions for the deployment of
infrastructure - often called the "supply side" of the broadband equation -
and to support the development of services - the "demand side" - within a
more secure digital environment. Finally, it also attempted to make the
benefits of the Information Society available to the socially excluded the
people with special needs.
The supply side, the objectives of the action plan were
to:
-
remove remaining obstacles to the upgrading of existing infrastructure and to the deployment of new one;
-
ensure the availability of financial incentives (from the EU or the national level), in case of clear market failures, especially in peripheral regions characterised by low density of population and/or geographical remoteness.
On the demand side, the action plan focused on:
-
removing regulatory obstacles to the development of new services (e.g. easier re-use of public sector information; development of digital rights management systems, etc.);
-
encouraging the public sector to fully exploit the possibilities offered by high speed connections and improve the quality and cost effectiveness of public services (e-Government, e-Health, e-Learning);
-
creating a favourable environment to encourage firms to adopt ICT and invest in human capital to develop e-Business activities;
-
pooling the demand of different public bodies (demand aggregation strategy) to facilitate the achievement of a critical mass of users that facilitates the deployment of infrastructure by enhancing commercial incentives to invest.
Financial support for the implementation of eEurope 2005
was provided by the MODINIS programme.
For an analysis of progress since the launch of the
action plan, see:
An evaluation of eEurope 2005 and MODINIS is to be published in 2009.
More information is available on the (archived)
eEurope 2005 website.
eEurope 2002
The European Commission launched the eEurope initiative
in December 1999 to bring the benefits of the Information Society to all
Europeans:
eEurope – an Information Society for All. Communication on a Commission
Initiative (COM 1999/687)
The initiative was welcomed by the Helsinki European
Council in December 1999, which invited the Commission, together
with the Council, provide a
progress report to the Lisbon Special European
Council and prepare the
eEurope Action Plan for endorsement by the European Council in Feira in
June 2000:
eEurope 2002 Action Plan agreed by Heads of State and Government in Feira in June 2000:
The eEurope 2002 Action Plan was adopted by the Member
States at the Feira European Council in June 2000. It targeted three areas:
1) cheaper, faster and secure Internet, 2) investing in people and skills,
and 3) stimulating the use of the Internet. The plan detailed the policy
actions required to meet these objectives by 2002. Financial support for the implementation of eEurope 2002
was provided by the
PROMISE programme
Following Communications:
eEurope 2002 update (November 2000),
eEurope 2002: Impact and Priorities (March 2001),
eEurope 2002 Benchmarking Report (February 2002)
The achievements of the eEurope 2002 Action Plan
are summarised in a
Final Report, which was presented by the Commission in February 2003.
eEurope 2002 was very successful in extending Internet connectivity and
helped the Member States adopt the existing legal framework for electronic
communications and important legislation for e-commerce. However, the
effective use of the Internet was not developing as fast as connectivity.
Therefore subsequent policy attention shifted to supporting use of ICT
through an increased availability of high quality infrastructure, as well as
availability of attractive services and applications and the encouragement
of organisational change. The next policy step was the eEurope 2005 Action
Plan.
eEurope+
The eEurope 2002 initiative was complemented by the eEurope+ Action
Plan for the EU Candidate Countries. At the European Ministerial
Conference in Warsaw in May 2000, Central and Eastern European
Countries agreed to launch an "eEurope-like Action Plan". In February 2001,
the European Commission invited Cyprus, Malta and Turkey to join that
initiative. The
eEurope+ Action Plan
,
launched by the Candidate Countries at the Göteborg European Summit in June 2001, set out a roadmap to accelerate the reform and modernisation of
their economies.
In order to facilitate comparison and exchange of
information not only among the Candidate Countries but also with the EU
Member States, actions were clustered around the same objectives and
benchmarking indicators as identified in eEurope by the EU-15. See the first
eEurope+ Progress Report
,
the
eEurope+ Final Progress Report
and the
Central and Eastern Europe Information Society Benchmarks report.