THE EU needs public policies which will reap the benefits of technological progress and ensure equitable access to new technology, according to the EU Commission's Green Paper on Living and Working in the Information Society, which was launched yesterday.
The two main concerns lacing people in the EU are whether information technologies would destroy more jobs than they create, and whether the complexity and cost of these technologies will widen existing inequalities.
"To meet these concerns we need public policies which can help us reap the benefits of technological progress and which can ensure equitable access to the information society and a fair distribution of the potential for prosperity, the paper states.
Launching the paper at a colloquium in Dublin Castle yesterday, the EU Commissioner for Social Affairs, Mr Padraig Flynn, said that in previous industrial and technological revolutions, "Europe has often got the balance right", and has "achieved considerable technical progress with the development of an advanced and enlightened social model.
"That model, which shows Europe following a path different from that followed by the US or Japan, has given many Europeans a place in a prosperous and just society", he said.
We must now find "a European path to the information society" with the focus on a "people first" approach. The choice was of "using technological change to achieve social progress or letting it invade our society unchecked".
The Minister of State for Labour Affairs, Ms Eithne Fitzgerald, said EU governments must anticipate and master change. "The information society has not signalled the end of work. Rather it has opened up new job opportunities", she said.
During the 1990s the European computer industry was set to triple the number of jobs from 18 million to 60 million. However, access to hardware and up to date software was becoming a critical problem. Although 70 per cent of European office workers and 40 million homes had access to PCs, this was only 11 per cent of EU citizens.
The most effective way to provide access to the information society link, she said, was to provide cheap upgrades to TV sets and telephones that would bring computer technology into the home.