EDRI has obtained secret documents in preparation of a Declaration against Terrorism that will be published during the Spring Summit of EU heads of state. The draft from the Irish presidency specifically mentions the need to prioritise mandatory data retention for GSM and internet providers. The Commission input for the Summit, issued a few days earlier, does not mention data retention, but proposes many other measures that will have a chilling effect on the daily lives of European citizens and their freedom to travel and communicate.

The desire for mandatory data retention was already expressed last week, on 19 March, during an emergency meeting of the EU's Justice and Home Affairs ministers in Brussels. Following a German initiative, the ministers discussed a catalogue of measures in the fight against

After a five-year investigation into Microsoft's business practise the EU Commission has decided that the company has violated the EU competition rules by abusing its near monopoly in the PC operating system. Microsoft will have to pay a 497 million euro fine.

The Commission has been investigating Microsoft practices since 1998 following a complaint by Sun Microsystems. The Commission has ruled that Microsoft abused its market power by deliberately restricting interoperability between Windows PCs and non-Microsoft work group servers, and by tying its media player with its operating system.

Microsoft's illegal conduct has enabled it to acquire a dominant position in the market for work group server operating systems and has significantly weakened competition on the media player market. The

The German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine reports about plans from the governing Social-Democrats (SPD) to make spamming an offence in Germany. According to the SPD, merely introducing fines is not enough, and spamming should become an offence, with penalties or a prison sentence. The working group on Telecommunication and Mail of the SPD did not yet decide on the length of the desired sentences. Germany will implement the anti-spam legislation in a specific law against unfair competition that also forbids unsolicited faxing, not in the simultaneous pending revision of the Telecommunication Law.

According to SPD-representative Ulrich Kelber prison sentences are necessary to be able to stop the biggest spammers, that send out millions of unsolicited commercial mails. 2 or 3 of the biggest spammers from the

The Council of Europe's Convention on Cybercrime will enter into force on 1 July 2004, following its ratification by Lithuania. The convention requires at least 5 CoE members to ratify. Previously Albania, Croatia, Estonia and Hungary have done so.

The convention's aim is to develop a common criminal policy on cybercrime by promoting international co-operation and the adoption of appropriate legislation. Signatories will have to implement into their national law criminal code concerning computer crime and will also have to give their police new powers to conduct investigations regarding computers and the internet.

Besides computer hacking and viruses, the convention covers (virtual) child pornography and computer-related fraud. Police forces in the ratifying countries will get new powers to seize data, intercept

On 22 March, the European Union has signed the Council of Europe's Convention on information and legal co-operation concerning 'Information Society Services', without reservation as to ratification.

The aim of this Convention, which was prepared in close co-operation between the Council of Europe and the European Commission, is to improve the exchange of information between all 45 countries in Europe about pending new legislation for the information society. The Council of Europe will act as a clearing-house for draft legislation and provide a harmonised approach to the regulation of on-line services at the pan-European level. Member states of the European Union were already familiar with this obligation, under the 'Transparency' directive (98/48/EC), that allows the Commission to assess draft national

On 30 January 2004, the European Commission published a report about the effectiveness of EU legislation on freedom of information. Article 255 of the treaty establishing the European Community, implemented through Regulation 1049/2001 of 30 May 2001, grants a right of access to European Parliament, Council and Commission documents to any Union citizen and to any natural or legal person residing, or having its registered office, in a Member State.

Two years after the implementation of the Regulation, it is hard to judge the effectiveness of the regulation, according to the Commission. The yearly amount of requests has doubled from 2001 to 2002, and the report suggests a similarly strong increase in 2003. Still, the total amount of requests remains low, namely 4.022 in 2002.

The European Telecom ministers have welcomed new action plans from the Commission to promote broadband access in Europe. The Commission calls on Member States who have not yet put in place a national broadband strategy to do so without delay, with a focus on delivering broadband in under-served areas via a variety of platforms. This summer the Commission is due to report about the progress on the different broadband strategies to both Council and Parliament.

The European Commission sees information and communication technologies as key factor for economical growth and improvement of productivity in Europe. On 3 February 2004, the Commission adopted the Communication "Connecting Europe at high speed: Recent developments in the sector of electronic communications". This report sums up a number of actions still

The European parliament's committee on Citizens' Freedoms and Rights, Justice and Home Affairs is preparing to vote on a proposal by MEP Johanna Boogerd-Quaak to reject the draft decision of the EU Commission under which airline passenger data are transferred to the US Bureau of Customs and Border Protection.

The proposal calls upon EU Member States to require airlines and travel agencies to obtain passengers' consent for the transfer of data and asks the EU commission to withdraw the draft decision which is the current 'legal' basis for the transfer of data.

The proposal calls the draft decision "contradictory, since it fails to take into account the CAPPS II system (which involves the systematic assessment of all passengers by means including recourse to private information services) but at the same time it authorises the use of