Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-10-25-Speech-1-058"
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"en.19991025.4.1-058"2
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"Mr President, it is a remarkable thing that we are coming to the end of a period of about 500 years when the main way of authenticating documents and transactions has been the written signature and the witnessed signature and so on. Now, within half a lifetime, we are entering a world which is going to be dominated by e-commerce, by new technologies and by signatures which do not exist in the old sense of the term and which therefore have to be authenticated in a new way. For many of us, and I am surprised Mrs Thors did not mention this, this is an exciting, equalising and liberating phenomenon because the old world was dominated by the great centres and peripheries were at a disadvantage compared with the centres. But in the new world of electronic commerce, there is no centre: the periphery is as central as the centre.
This will be a great thing for many of us in this House and certainly for Mr Miller and myself who represent Scotland here. Indeed it is such a very welcome development that we in the European Union should be setting out to create an adequate framework for this form of commerce – an adequate framework for mutual trust among citizens of the different countries because, after all, if anything acknowledges no frontier, it is the Internet.
We believe, as other speakers have said, that this directive does a very good job. I would particularly like to congratulate my fellow new Member, Mr Lechner, on the job he did for us in the committee. My own group would have felt happier if there had been somewhat stronger protections for privacy as well as somewhat stronger data protection elements. No doubt in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity these remain with the Member States and I have no particular objection to that. But it may be something that we will need to revisit at another time.
It is also very important, as has been said by others, that there will be a possibility for further development internationally because the frontiers of the EU are artificial frontiers when it comes to this matter.
I want to be sure that when developing international agreements, we do not find things arise which are oppressive either to citizens or to consumers. Not all of us feel that the balance has always been well struck in the World Trade Organisation, for example, between environmental, consumer and worker protection and the liberalisation of trade. Let us not see that happen again in this domain. Our negotiators must fight hard for a fair and just framework as well as a free market."@en1
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