The Digital Single Market has been positioned in the top ten priorities of the EU Commission, where Commissioner Ansip has been appointed to take the lead to deliver together with his team a proposal for a Digital Single Market (DSM) Strategy. The DSM strategy would be unveiled today so there will be more to come.
As a matter of fact, the Vice-President for the Digital Single Market is also a member of the Alliance for Liberal and Democrats for Europe Group (ALDE), who put together a position paper listing the actions they would expect to be included in the forthcoming strategy.
According to ALDE the DSM Strategy should come to terms with the need to update the European legislative framework to the digital era so to exploit its full potential.
The suggested actions towards the creation of a Digital Single Market would cover the following areas:
- enhancing protection, awareness and trust of consumers and providing a clear framework for e-businesses to flourish, operate and grow, including legislative proposal on cloud computing, clear ‘opt-in’ rules as to users data regarding e-health, marketing and advertising purposes, removal of cross-border barriers in mobile payments, development of internet of things, machine-to-machine communication standards and use of Big Data and adoption of a legislative proposal on network and information security
- granting effectiveness to non-discriminatory provisions in relation to consumers but also SMEs, with a possible review of the Vertical Restraints Block Exemption Regulation, e-commerce and services directives
- acknowledging the Internet platform role and effectively tackling obstacles to unleash the potential of the Internet economy
- modernizing the relationships between governments and citizens through the re-use of public sector information and promotion of e-government
- encouraging engagement in ICT services as users and creators, including educational initiatives, job creation, revision of the Digital Agenda target for 2020 and support of digital entrepreneurship and start-ups
- abolishing roaming surcharges by the end of 2015 and revising the telecoms regulatory framework, including the establishment of a single European telecommunications regulator and putting forward a clear definition of net neutrality in EU law, via the Telecom Single Market package
- providing EU with an harmonised and integrated system of copyright to tackle geo-blocking and dealing with eBooks and online newspaper consumptions on VAT non-discriminatory terms