This often creates prohibitive costs including the need to travel to the new location to register the company and to sort out social security issues for staff being relocated. More than 250 participants from all EU Member States debated the priorities for eGovernment in Europe during a conference entitled “Cross-border eGovernment services for administrations, businesses and citizens” that ended in Brussels today. New EU eGovernment services will open up access and cut red tape for the free movement of people, goods and services across Europe. Though some hurdles must still be overcome to reach this ambitious goal, a blueprint for the future technical infrastructure of eGovernment in Europe was presented at the conference. The European Commission also presented its new IDABC programme, which aims to improve the efficiency of European public administrations.
The discussions at the conference focussed on:
- means to seize public procurement opportunities in other Member States
- a reduction of the flow of the paper documents to improve the efficiency of trade procedures. Paper administration is estimated as one of the major challenges to the international trade. According to World Trade Organization (WTO) 7 – 10 % of the total value of the global commerce (i.e. about 400 billions USD) is spent in the process of document exchange that accompany the respective deals.
- eGovernment will make life easier for mobile workers to deal with their social security rights (insurances, pension rights etc.). Citizens abroad (tourism, working, studying, etc.), would have easy access to health services.
The Your Europe portal was presented as a first step towards this new generation of eGovernment services. Your Europe offers already now easily accessible information and services to those mobile citizens and businesses who wish to take full advantage of their European rights and opportunities.
More information on the IDABC programmes can be found here.
Quelle: Eurofunding, 21.02.2005
