European Union News - Information Society

The European Commission presented a draft regulation aimed at cutting by 30% the cost of rolling out high-speed Internet. The new rules leave organisational issues very much to the discretion of member states.

The results of the European Commission Innovation Union Scoreboard 2013 show that while the most innovative countries have further improved their performance, others have shown a lack of progress. Sweden remains at the top, followed by Germany, Denmark and Finland. Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia are the countries that have most improved since last year.

The European Commission has launched the first of the six parts that form the StartUp Europe campaign. The key objective of the plan is to interconnect the existing ecosystems of innovation and entrepreneurship in the European Union by facilitating the dialogue and the exchange of experiences. The first step of this plan has been taken by creating the Startup Europe Leaders Club.

The European Commission launched two public consultations on media freedom and pluralism and audiovisual media regulator independence in the EU. The contributions to both consultations can be made until 14th June 2013.

The European Commission announced that it is working with 27 of the world's leading tech companies and associations to measure their carbon footprint arising from the production, transport and sales of ICT goods, networks and services. The next step in this European Commission initiative is to get the ICT and relevant industries to put these methods into everyday use.

The European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) conference on "Towards a more responsible use of the internet: The European civil society perspective" was organised to discuss if and how a balance can be struck between online freedom of expression and the protection of personal dignity and privacy. At the conference, many participants came out in favour of industry self-regulation, which they argued was better-suited for ensuring the protection of users online than stringent, binding regulations.

The European Commission has imposed a €561 million fine on Microsoft for failing to comply with its commitments to offer users a browser choice screen enabling them to easily choose their preferred web browser. In particular, Microsoft failed to roll out the browser choice screen with its Windows 7 Service Pack 1 from May 2011 until July 2012, according to the Commission.