European Union News - Information Society

The European Economic and Social Committee adopted at its September plenary session two opinions which called for specific regulations to be put in place in a bid to protect children against harmful advertising and damaging online content. The EESC highlights that it is being favoured e-commerce over child protection.

Comments from interested parties on commitments offered by four international publishers - Simon & Schuster (CBS Corp., USA), Harper Collins (News Corp., USA), Hachette Livre (Lagardère Publishing, France), Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck (owner of inter alia Macmillan, Germany) – and Apple, are requested by the Commission on the sale of e-books.

The Industry Committee in the European Parliament amended the draft legislation on Galileo, the European GPS system, and the EGNOS programmes for improving GPS signal quality, for more of the new services to be offered free of charge. Moreover, MEPs approved new legislation to ensure that Europe's two satellite navigation systems can be funded and operated from 2014 to 2020.

The European Parliament approved the new directive that will allow anyone across the EU to access so-called orphan works, i.e. photos, films or poems protected by copyright but whose right holders cannot be found. The new rules would also protect institutions that use orphan works from future copyright infringement claims.

The European Commission announced the successful pilot scheme with regard to the functioning of the Computer Emergency Response Team, or CERT-EU. For this reason, the Vice-President Neelie Kroes assured that the EU institutions can now count on a permanent CERT to deal with increasingly sophisticated cyber threats against them.

The European Parliament adopted a new deal with the Council which intends to provide EU firms swifter access to standard solutions to technical problems. The new regulation aims in particular to enhance the use of standards in the service sector and speed up the development process for information and technology (ITC) standards.

The European Space Agency (ESA) and the European Investment Bank (EIB) signed an agreement to work together on satellite-based services that can bridge the digital divide and bring economic growth to the Mediterranean region.

The European Commission has unconditionally approved the proposed creation of a joint venture between Vodafone, Telefónica and Everything Everywhere in the field of mobile commerce in the UK. Following its investigation, the Commission concluded that the proposed joint venture will not likely lead to a significant impediment to effective competition in the European Economic Area.