The eEurope initiative was launched by the European Commission in December 1999 and approved by the European Council of Lisbon (March 2000). The communication that was subsequently adopted under the title "eEurope - An Information Society for All", forms part of what is known as the Lisbon strategy which sets the objective for the European Union to become the world's most competitive and dynamic knowledge economy by 2010. The key objectives of the initiative are:
•bringing every citizen, home and school, every business and administration, into the digital age and online;
•creating a digitally literate Europe, supported by an entrepreneurial culture open to information technology;
•ensuring that the information society is socially inclusive.
In order to achieve these aims, the Commission adopted the
eEurope 2002 action plan in May 2000 which was approved by the European Council of Feira in June 2000. The main actions were intended to stimulate a cheaper, faster, secure Internet, promote human and financial investment and stimulate the use of the Internet.
The eEurope action plan was supplemented in June 2001 by the
eEurope+action plan in the candidate countries, intended to accelerate reform and modernisation of the economies of the candidate countries, encourage the creation of institutional capacities, improve global competitiveness and strengthen social cohesion.
In June 2002, the European Council of Sevilla adopted the
eEurope 2005 action plan which follows up eEurope 2002. The new action plan is basically focused on the deployment of broadband access at competitive prices, network security and better use of information technology by public bodies ("eGovernment").
See:
•
Information Society•
Telecommunications•
Trans-European Networks (TEN)
