Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-06-21-Speech-4-045"
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"en.20070621.7.4-045"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, today's debate is especially interesting and I should like to take this opportunity to congratulate the rapporteur on her worthwhile effort.
First of all, however, I should like to point out that the logical precondition to use of the digital environment is the development and dissemination of IT knowledge to all European citizens and cheap Internet access in all states without exception. The Internet is an excellent way for businesses and, more importantly, for consumers to make use of the single market. Moreover, the opening of the market through digital communication tools has been done with the objective of benefiting the citizens, who will have a broader choice of goods and services of a better standard and at competitive prices. However, these benefits are only available subject to certain preconditions. The European digital market is not strong or unified and the percentage of consumers, especially natural persons, engaging in e-commerce, especially cross-border e-commerce, is very small, due to the general insecurity which prevails. If, however, legal protection were strengthened at all three stages of the transaction, in other words before, during and after completion of the transaction, then we would be in a position to guarantee a secure environment, both for the citizens' transactions and their privacy.
The following could help to achieve this objective: timely and ongoing information for consumers about their rights and obligations, the incorporation of consumer policy into other Community policies, better control of the markets in order to avoid possible abuse on the part of stronger contracting parties, especially large companies, the possibility for collective claims for the effective restoration of possible losses and, finally, stronger independent consumer associations.
All this does, of course, presuppose certain political choices, especially on the part of the Member States and as long as there are areas or even countries in which actual access, on the one hand, and fast and cheap access to the Internet, on the other, are still unknown concepts, then I greatly fear that we shall come up against the digital divide and shall have to approach the digital environment theoretically."@en1
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