Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-10-25-Speech-1-064"
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"en.19991025.4.1-064"2
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"Mr President, I too would like to congratulate Mr Lechner on the way he has presented the report and I particularly commend him for not trying to add too much to what was basically a sound directive. There is always the temptation for rapporteurs to add some new aspects but he has wisely resisted that temptation.
I made my first speech in this House back in July in commending the initiative of the Finnish Presidency in giving priority to information society issues. It is a particular pleasure to be able to make some comments on the directive which we are discussing today and to build on what a number of colleagues have said: in that this is a crucial measure in that it is the first of a series. The way we deal with this in this House, in the Commission, in the Union, will be very important for the development of electronic commerce in the future. In making this closing contribution I want to think ahead about the implications of this for other directives and also to request to the Commission in particular to make sure that this first directive is very closely monitored in the way that it operates in practice.
As my colleague, Mrs Berger, and a number of other speakers pointed out, there is a certain amount of flexibility given to member governments as to how they implement this directive. We want to make sure that they do not add provisions to this directive, make it too restrictive, or too intrusive so that it will choke off the development or the use of electronic signatures and thereby hold back the development of electronic commerce itself. That, after all, is what we want to achieve with the legislation that comes here. We want legislation that will encourage the development of electronic commerce from the consumer’s perspective and encourage businesses to move into this new age of directly connected business.
Electronic signatures will be very important in giving consumers that security to encourage them to take on electronic business. I therefore ask the Commission to make sure that they monitor this aspect of the directive at the level of national governments to make sure that it is working effectively and achieving its aims of encouraging consumers and businesses to participate in the electronic revolution.
The second and important aspect of this directive is that it has been made technologically neutral. It is not the job of politicians to determine technological solutions. We are living in a very fast-moving world, where new products are developed in months, come to the market very quickly, are on offer very quickly and accepted by consumers very quickly. We must make sure that our legislation does not close off technological options or inhibit engineers and software engineers from developing new products. Again, this is something I would like to ask the Commission to monitor carefully.
The final – and I think crucial – point for the development of electronic commerce across the Union is that we must provide a framework that encourages smaller businesses to get involved in electronic commerce. If we do not encourage the small businesses, the micro businesses, to take advantage of the immense power of this technology to open up international markets quickly and cheaply, to enable them to offer new products in a very simple and effective way direct to the customer, then I suggest that we will have failed. Again, we must look at how this directive operates in small- and medium-sized businesses and in particular, to pick up on the point of my colleague, Lord Inglewood, we must ensure that the changes in the overall legal framework do not have the potential to frustrate the entry into electronic commerce of smaller businesses.
I commend this legislation. I leave those pointers and I hope that the Commission will pick them up in moving forward into this new era of framework legislation for electronic commerce."@en1
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