The Spanish presidency of the EU will push for the creation of a "common digital market" to help develop pan-European online services and boost the economy, Industry Minister Miguel Sebastian said Monday.
"The moment has come to study a new strategy for the next five years in which information and communications technology play an important role in the development of a digital society in Europe," he said at an industry event.
Spain wants to put this new agenda in place during its presidency of the EU during the first half of this year and it will be one of the "pillars" of the bloc's new 10-year growth strategy, dubbed the "2020 strategy."
Madrid hopes to unveil the new strategy at an informal meeting of EU telecoms ministers in Granada in southwestern Spain on April 19-20.
"We are still far from having a common digital market," added Sebastian, who was speaking at the presentation of a report on the needs of the sector.
The gathering was attended by top managers from major European firms from the sector including Sweden's Ericsson, the world's top mobile telecoms equipment firm, France's Alcatel, Telecom Italy and Spain's Telefonica.
Among the measures recommended in the report to boost the competitiveness of the sector was a relaxation of intellectual property rules, the uniformisation of data protection rules and greater access to markets outside the EU.
Francisco Mignorance, the director of the Business Software Alliance, a trade body that represents Microsoft and Apple Computer, among others, in Brussels, pointed the finger at China which he said imposed rules to restrict access to its domestic market by non-Chinese firms.
But these same Chinese firms do not face similar restrictions on bidding for work in Europe, he told a news conference on the sidelines of the event.
Spain took over the rotating six-month presidency of the EU from Sweden on January 1.
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