THE European Commission adopted a packet of initiatives week aimed at smoothing the transition to an "information society", but stopped short of proposing new rules in sensitive areas such as pornography.
Instead, it said EU governments should be required to notify other member States of planned measures to regulate the new computer and media services.
"Since the information society will lead to new legislation, it would create an obstacle to the internal market if member states were to do this in an unco-ordinated manner," EU Internal Market Commissioner Mario Monti said.
He said the EU was not ready to propose its own rules on online pornography, preferring to monitor the situation. "It would simply be too early to try to regulate EU wide."
Instead, the Commission has proposed a "transparency mechanism" which would oblige governments to notify the Commission when they are planning to regulate information services. They would have to freeze the plan for three months to give the Commission, other EU members and commercial interests time to comment. They could also be asked to delay a measure if objections arose or the EU decided to take its own initiative. The Commission also adopted a discussion paper calling for a "radical rethink" of European employment policies and a major overhaul of education and training systems to take account of the "information society".
It adopted a second paper highlighting EU policy concerns in areas such as research and telecommunications regulation, and a third on ways to promote the rapid development of standards for information and communications technologies.
Industry Commissioner Martin Baagemann said he wanted to promote "de facto" standards those drawn up by industry rather than formal standards bodies.
The Commission is also studying ways to increase coordination of telecommunications regulation in the EU. On Thursday Olivetti's chairman, Carlo De Benederti, was appointed chairman of a working group for the creation of an EU telecommunications regulatory authority. The Commission has also decided to organise a "global conference" on the information revolution next February.