Europe’s information and communications sector could create €1 trillion ($1.3...

Europe’s information and communications sector could create €1 trillion ($1.3 trillion) in extra economic activity and millions of new jobs if necessary actions are taken, Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes said Tuesday at a Lisbon Council summit in Brussels. One of the key elements of the EU digital agenda is the digital single market, she said. It should be easier to sell goods from a distance than “real” items but in practice the cross-border market is still fragmented, she said. Rules must be applied consistently and uniformly across the EU, and steps taken to ensure that half of Europeans are buying online by 2015, she said. More harmonization is needed, so she and Internal Market Commissioner Michel Barnier will unveil proposals to boost e-commerce via safe online payments, including micro-payments and ways to secure cross-border transactions, she said. To help digital content markets flourish, Kroes said she'll outline policies next month to make public sector data such as weather information available for others to use in new content and services. To make users feel safe online, privacy rules should be based on transparency, fairness and user control, she said. People’s privacy rights shouldn’t be sacrificed to economic interests but those interests shouldn’t be damaged “by insisting on too inflexible or cumbersome” rules and the “paternalistic attitude toward citizens they embody,” she said. She wants the Web industry to agree, by June, on a “do-not-track” standard that gives users more control over who can track them on the Internet; makes it easy for companies to do the right thing; and increases opportunities for designers, application and device makers to develop clear, user-friendly ways to record and enforce user preferences, she said. The European Commission also has plans to spur investment in new networks and to create the right legal framework to make Europe more “cloud-active,” she said.