Open Letter on the "Task Force to foster the competitiveness of Europe's ICT industry"
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Brussels, London, Berlin, Warsaw, Ljubljana, 4 July 2006 -- In an open letter to the EU Commission, six small business associations have called on Commissioners Verheugen and Reding to modify their plans for a task force, designed "to define the future EU policy in ICT".
- Brussels, London, Berlin, Warsaw, Ljubljana 3rd July 2006
- Open Letter on the "Task Force to foster the competitiveness of Europe's ICT industry" Dear Commissioner Verheugen, Dear Commissioner Reding, On 6 June 2006 the Commission launched an ICT Task Force in order to foster the competitiveness of Europe's IT industry [1]. The Commission chose a group of representatives of the European IT/ICT industry to make IT policy recommendations. With some notable exceptions, these representatives are mostly very large firms. Given that IT is such a vital part of our modern information economy, and one of the drivers for European competitiveness, we would like to thank the Commission for its initiative in creating this forum. However, we feel obliged to remind the Commission that 80% of the information economy consists of SMEs[2], who thus generate the majority of jobs and taxes in this sector. Without a healthy SME sector, European IT will suffer and the European economy will lose competitiveness, jobs, and overall prosperity. We assume that the Commission's goals are to generate useful discussion of its IT policies, rather than start a friendly but unrepresentative talking club. Therefore we formally request the Commission to complete the missing 80% of its work by ensuring that this Task Force adequately represents the bulk of the IT industry, namely the SMEs. We understand that it is easier to group together a few large firms, than to group the hundreds of thousands of SMEs which form the mass of the European information economy. However we propose that the Commission work together with our organisations to bring this silent majority into the process. With a true economic majority, the Commission's proposals will be treated with much more weight, and are more likely to be economically accurate, reflecting the desire of the broader market for open standards, fair competition, and proportional ownership. We hope that the Commission will seriously consider our proposal, and modify the current project to truly represent the European IT sector. Yours sincerely, The signatories, Pieter Hintjens, President of FFII David Ramsden, Chairman of PCG UK Mario Ohoven, President of CEA-PME
Marco Schulze, Spokesman of PatentFrei.de Slawomir Kosz, President of the Polish Software Market Association Andrej Mertelj, President of the Slovene Software Developers Assocation For any questions regarding this letter, please contact Benjamin Henrion
<bhenrion@ffii.org> +32-2-4148403