Dotty about e-europe
Is this the sunset of the Golden e-Age? These may be the last few months during which the internet will remain relatively legislation and bureaucrat free. Enjoy it while it lasts.
Although European politicians and regulators fall over themselves to say that they do not want to interfere with the golden goose, a gigabyte load of directives, policy papers and other initiatives are coming down the pike.
Nor are the Americans far behind. A delegate from New York to the inaugural meeting of E-Ping (witty acronym for the less than whizzy European Parliamentarians' Internet Group) told MEPs that US state legislatures have 2,350 measures on their way to enactment. But at least the US has only one commercial culture. Another E-Ping delegate, a formidable Frenchwoman from Iris-a leftwing French IT consumers' group-told the same meeting that her organisation's solution for all jurisdictional or consumer disputes is that they should take their turn in the queue for local courts and judges. The Woman From Iris clearly represented the worst European nightmare to The Man From Uncle Sam.
Europe's about face on e-matters has been one of the EU's best tragi-comic turns of the late 1990s. When Silicon Valley was already humming early in the decade, its products were treated with the kind of disdain that civil servants might reserve for amusing but inconsequential children's toys. In France for years they boasted that they were years in front of the pack with the mighty Minitel-an online Yellow Pages used for booking train tickets.
Now, with Enterprise Commissioner Erkki Liikanen from the land of Nokia, the European establishment has been transformed with a wave of the digital wand. Politicians and civil servants alike cluster around the new-tech roulette table hoping that if the wheel does its stuff, unemployment, the pensions crisis and budget deficits will all disappear like a tiresome 20th-century hangover.
Without a single tongue in cheek, the commission and the Portuguese presidency have pledged to use American technology to make e-europe nothing less than the world's most exciting and dynamic commercial e-environment. They have some way to go.
Who needs dot.eu?
Meanwhile, a new controversy is on the point of joining the illegal straight-bananas, batty-beefburgers and prawn crisp packets that scatter Conservative Central Office's international department. The "dot.eu" domain name crisis is coming soon to a sceptic near you.
What is ".eu"? Do not be alarmed. This is merely a possible new e-mail address, like .com or .uk. Such "domains" are brilliant money spinners for those who manage them (registries) and those who market them (registrars), although the former tend to be not-for-profit companies, now bursting at the seams with cash.
So why, when we already have .uk, .fr, .de and .it do we need another, supranational one? That is a question many in the sandal-wearing internet community are asking. The answer, it seems, is that it is the apple of the European commission's eye, as essential as the flag and the Euro-national anthem.
But the creation of the new domain raises many questions. Should we therefore have .pr (Pacific Rim) or .as (Asia)? Will Andorra and Antartica squabble over .an? The lawyers are already sharpening their quill pens and beady eyed net-entrepreneurs are tweaking their Euro-CVs, waiting for the tender.
It seems that HMG is "not opposed on principle," so it only remains for Bill Cash and the Daily Telegraph to join the fun, and the entertainment will begin.
Tough love in Lisbon
Talking of enterprising initiatives, yet another accolade must be paid to our ostrich-feathered friends at the FCO. Or was it Ali Campbell's Euro-PR training courses now being run for the commission spokesmen's department out of No. 10? Either way, it appears that the Old Alliance is still so strong that the Portuguese agenda for the Lisbon summit was largely written in Whitehall. With its familiar mix of "tough love" social and employment policies and promises of a laptop in every home, Blairite thumbprints are all over it.
The reason why Britain appears to be so influential in the Court of Senhor Guterres is that when the Portuguese presidency called on Prodi's office for guidance sometime in November, they found-as so many others have-that it was out to lunch. Hence it accepted the sandwiches offered by Martin Donnelly in the Cabinet Office.
The grain of sand in the oyster is, as ever, French. Buried among the e-initiatives is a threat to discuss the Information and Consultation Directive-a measure which will require predatory captains of industry to consult with their trade unions and, most likely, their grandmothers, before launching hostile takeover bids of unsuspecting rivals.
The British, of course, are blocking this exciting new experiment in corporate transparency but their German allies are now wobbling. Everybody now expects the measure to be Lionel Jospin's "bombe surprise," to be served as the main, socialist course at the Nice summit in December-just a few weeks before the French elections.
Solana gets cross
How typical of an ex-Nato man to be obsessed with security. Javier Solana, the EU's high representative for foreign affairs, is on his high horse. Apparently the bearded Stakanovite returned from a dinner at about midnight the other day and found his offices, in the Council's gargantuan Justus Lipsius building, over-run with hundreds of very relaxed delegates from various African, Caribbean and Pacific countries-in town for a little light negotiating. Not only is the Spaniard protesting about lax security, he seems to be equally upset about the discovery of dozens of hidden microphones in almost every negotiating room of the Council headquarters.
