Bid to boost cooperation on standards in IT sector

Date: 25/09/1997

HIGH-tech EU industry will come face to face with competitors from the Americas and the Far East next week at a conference designed to boost cooperation on standards for the information society.

Telecoms Commissioner Martin Bangemann sees the 'global standards conference' as a vital weapon to keep industry and users talking to each other and avoid costly clashes over competing world norms for emerging technologies such as digital broadcasting, telecoms networks, electronic cash and secure electronic commerce.

Officials say top priority at the conference jointly hosted by the Commission and European and world standards bodies will be given to industry and consumer groups working on standards and customer requirements, with governments taking a back seat.

“One issue is how to deal with trust and confidence on the consumer side when you are doing electronic commerce. Here there are a lot of promising standards coming out of the market,” said one.

“They have to be presented to the public and at the same time consumer groups and regulators have to look at them to understand better which technical solutions best match their different societies and their legal frameworks.”

Encryption technology allows personal data to be protected when consumers are doing business over the Internet or using technology such as mobile phones. But governments across the world have been reluctant to allow this encryption know-how to get into the wrong hands. The US has banned exportation of strong encryption technology, on grounds of national security.

Another key issue to be addressed by the Brussels conference, from 1-3 October, will be how EU standard-setters can improve relations with American industry after years of tension between the free-market US and the more interventionist EU.

This partly results from Europe's more fragmented market. If companies based in EU countries with a small home market want to expand into the rest of Europe, they need to reach agreement with other manufacturers on common standards.

Officials believe these transatlantic differences have become less marked now that Bangemann has signalled that the EU should embrace market-driven 'de-facto' standards untrammelled by bureaucrats, member states and standards committees.

“There were some misunderstandings with the US, but we have no intention of telling standardisers what to do. In any case, we both now agree that it is a market-driven exercise. The problems have been removed,” said the aide.