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Deutsch: Kommissarin für die Digitale Agenda unterstützt offene Standards Macedonian: Комесарот за Дигиталната агенда...

On 10 June 2010, European Commission Vice-President for the Digital Agenda Neelie Kroes addressed the Open Forum Europe 2010 Summit on interoperability and open standards, stating she was planning to overhaul the European Interoperability Framework to make ICT standard-setting more transparent and make sure public administrations use open source formats to prevent the development of monopolies in the sector.

Kroes has been supporting interoperability and open standards for some time now and she emphasized again her belief that choosing open standards is a very smart business decision.

She reminded she had proposed five actions in the Digital Agenda for Europe in order to "have more and better standards recognised and created in Europe, to make better use of these standards and to improve interoperability in the absence of standards."

The new framework that will be developed would include a requirement for standard-setting bodies, such as World Wide Web Consortium and Oasis, to have disclosure rules in order to make it easier for others to use and adapt the technology.

The Commissioner believes appropriate rules for ex-ante disclosures of essential Intellectual Property Rights and licensing conditions in standard-setting contexts must be promoted. Transparency of the process is absolutely necessary. "In some cases, the choice of a technology in a standard might be obvious in the absence of technical alternatives. Costs and licensing conditions are less relevant in such cases. But in most cases there are competing options and it makes clear sense to also consider this information."

She criticised the authorities that get stuck into proprietary technology for a long time. "This is a waste of public money that most public bodies can no longer afford."

Moreover, she also warned that anti-trust litigation was not how she planned to increase interoperability in the market. She expressed her intention to explore "all options to ensure that significant market players cannot just choose to deny interoperability with their product. You no doubt remember that I have some experience with reticent high-tech companies: I had to fight hard and for several years until Microsoft began to license missing interoperability information. Complex anti-trust investigations followed by court proceedings are perhaps not the only way to increase interoperability."

This position comes in line with the EU telecoms ministers April declaration to support the freely-available Open Document Format in eGovernment services.

Neelie Kroes Address at Open Forum Europe 2010 Summit: 'Openness at the heart of the EU Digital Agenda' Brussels (10.06.2010)
http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=SPEECH/10/300

Kroes presses ahead with open IT standards (11.06.2010)
http://www.euractiv.com/en/infosociety/kroes-presses-ahead-open-it-sta...

EDRi-gram: Two Digital Agendas, but one European Union (19.05.2010)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number8.10/digital-agenda-europe

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