Accelerating the development of the European information economy: the European Commission’s eEurope initiative

The eEurope programme is the latest in a long line of initiatives that seek to accelerate the development of the European information economy. The core objective is to bring as many Europeans online as quickly as possible. The key to its success is in stimulating a mature information market, which in turn relies upon spreading electronic commerce throughout the EU’s socio-economic body. However, agreement in this key area has been slow to emerge, restrained in part by cultural factors in the EU.