Statements by Jerzy BUZEK (EPP, PL), Chair of the ITRE Committee, Vicky FORD (ECR, UK), Chair of the IMCO Committee, and Pavel SVOBODA (EPP, CZ), Chair of the JURI Committee in reaction to the Adoption of the Digital Single Market package, in the EP in Brussels.

Brussels

digital single market (T)

statement

BUZEK, Jerzy (EPP, PL)

joint meeting

FORD, Vicky (ECR, UK)

SVOBODA, Pavel (EPP, CZ)

Adoption of the Digital Single Market package: MEP's reactions to the EC strategy

Title: Adoption of the Digital Single Market package : MEP&apos;s reactions to the EC strategy. ITRE, IMCO, JURI Committees

SOUNDBITE (English), Jerzy BUZEK (EPP, PL), Chair of the ITRE Committee, We should help our industry, SMEs, to be more competitive, to win the competition all over the world, as probably the simplest way, to build a digital economy which is growing fast everywhere and we need very urgent answers for that. And we expect in the EU thanks to the digital economy to create 4 million new jobs.

SOUNDBITE (English), Jerzy BUZEK (EPP, PL), Chair of the ITRE Committee, In my Committee, for Industry, research and Energy, we have been tackling the problems of ICT, information society, digital agenda, telecom package, for many years so now we are very well prepared for that and we are ready for discussion just to help our citizens, our businesses to create new jobs in our continent because it is the most important.

SOUNDBITE (English), Vicky FORD (ECR, UK), Chair of the IMCO Committee, It's about helping businesses and consumers, trade across borders, making it as easy to trade online as it has been off-line, but it's also about things like data protection and cyber security and safety online, how you pay for goods? Do they arrive on time? it's about access to public services and making sure you can get the information you need online, so it's a huge number of different things.

SOUNDBITE (English), Vicky FORD (ECR, UK), Chair of the IMCO Committee, If you look at, for example, digital content, how do you make sure that the song you thought you had bought you can still listen to whilst you travel, so we need to enable the portability, but also give security to the song writers and musicians so this is why you need to have action on illegal content.

SOUNDBITE (English), Vicky FORD (ECR, UK), Chair of the IMCO Committee, I do not want the Commission to go back to that old style one size fits all legislation, this market is moving really fast, it's really exciting and vibrant, yes we need to make sure that the Internet is fair, yes we need to make sure that competition rules aren't abused, but we also need to make sure that where it's working in Europe it is allowed to succeed.

SOUNDBITE (English), Pavel SVOBODA (EPP, CZ), Chair of the JURI Committee, There is also for instance copyright, that is also an area where more harmonisation is needed and at the same time I feel certain reluctance by Member States to go that way, there is one more hurdle at least that I see as an obstacle, if we want to have a true digital single market this market needs to be multilinguistic, if consumers only have the possibility to buy in English then they will hesitate to make full use of this possibilities if they can't for instance read all the conditions of the contracts, etc..