BACK TO HOME PAGE

EUROPEAN REVIEW

ISSUE 36 - Page 8

AN EU MEMBER STATE WAS CHOSEN AS the venue for the first international pow-wow open to all users of the worldwide web. While it was organised by the United Nations and opened by the EU Commissioner for the Information Society, Viviane Reding, those attending included individuals, charities and NGOs as well as businesses and governments. Although the forum could not reach any binding decisions there is a feeling that a new way of administrating the net is needed. Due to the history of the internet’s development the US Department of Commerce is effectively in charge currently whereas an organisation called ICANN doles out unique numbers for PCs and domain names for web sites.
The meeting had four strands for discussion: openness, security, diversity and access. Openness concerns the need for freedom of expression on the web which has been largely unregulated for the last twenty years so that a free flow of information and ideas may be maintained. On the other hand security is not only necessary for governments and commercial sites but for individuals who wish to protect their privacy and are fed up with unsolicited e-mail (spam) and other inconveniences. The subject of diversity encompasses not only the predominance of American content in English which the EU has already pledged to dilute with more European web pages, but the concerns of countries such as China and India where most of the population use non-Latin scripts. At the moment web addresses can only use the Latin alphabet. Finally access boils down to whether to have greater regulation. Some governments, such as the UK’s, want to make the net ‘more hostile’ to terrorists while commercial interests are worried about infringement of copyright by individuals uploading material to sites such as ‘YouTube’ or ‘MySpace’.
Not surprisingly the forum has its own web site where you can watch the debates, email questions, post your own web diary (blog) or contribute to the communal encyclopaedia (wiki).

Web sites mentioned on this page are available at:
Internet Governance Forum - Front page	http://www.intgovforum.org/meeting.htm
Commissioner Margot Wallström’s weblog	http://weblog.jrc.cec.eu.int/page/wallstrom
European Industrial Relations Dictionary	http://eurofound.europa.eu/areas/industrialrelations/dictionary/index.htm
EU logo competition - Front page:	http://www.logo-competition.eu/

IR dictionary a mouse click away

New logo chosen for EU birthday

THE EUROPEAN FOUNDATION FOR THE Improvement of Living and Working Conditions has made available an invaluable resource for union officers, academics and others involved in industrial relations. The online European Industrial Relations Dictionary aims to be a ‘comprehensive collection of the most commonly used terms in employment and industrial relations at EU level today’. It contains over 300 alphabetical entries, usually no longer than a few paragraphs, from ‘Accession’ to ‘Work Life Balance’ with special reference to EU practice. Clickable links take the user to relevant EU legislation and case law. Also included are nine longer theme papers on such topics as ‘Health and safety’, ‘Free movement of workers’ and ‘Towards an EU system of industrial relations’. According to the Foundation the emerging structure of EU-wide industrial relations has influenced all Member States and the dictionary will also provide a historical overview of how it grew with European integration as an aid to understanding its current form. Commented Deputy Director Willy Buschak ‘The European industrial relation dictionary is the Foundation’s response to an increasing demand for an up-to-date, easily accessible and useful resource on the European system of industrial relations’.

AS PART OF THE CELEBRATIONS to mark next year’s fiftieth anniversary of the founding of what became the European Union a logo has been chosen through a  competition entered by more than 2,500 young designers. The winner is Szymon Skrzypczak a 23-year old art student from Poland who will soon see his creation on web sites and documents across Europe. Commission Vice-President Margot Wallström said: ‘The winning logo represents the diversity and vigour of Europe and at the same time it underlines the desired unity and solidarity of our continent’.