Summary: EU Presidency Statement - UN General Assembly, Information and Communication Technologies for Development (27 March 2006)
Mr. President,
I have the pleasure of speaking on behalf of the European Union. The Acceding Countries Bulgaria and Romania, the Candidate Countries Turkey, Croatia and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, the Countries of the Stabilisation and Association Process and potential candidates Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro, and the EFTA country Norway, member of the European Economic Area, as well as Ukraine align themselves with this declaration.
The European Union welcomes the adoption of the resolution on the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) and the submission of the report of the Secretary General of the ITU. In this regard, I would like to stress that the inclusion in the GA resolution of some of the provisions contained in the Tunis documents should not be seen as a way to prioritize such provisions over others. The balanced and extensively negotiated Tunis documents must be considered and implemented in their
integrity.
Mr. President,
On behalf of the EU I would like to thank Tunisia for hosting the second phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) from 16 to 18 November 2005 in Tunis. We also want to thank all other participants, in particular the members of the UN family and the various stakeholders who spared no effort to reach concrete results and therefore make the whole Summit a success.
The spirit of the Tunis Summit leads us further along the way from principles to action. In particular, the Tunis documents address the outstanding issues from Geneva on Internet governance and financial mechanisms and furthermore promote the establishment of partnerships between the various stakeholders of the Information Society.
The Tunis documents confirm the consensus reached in Geneva on the WSIS Declaration of Principles and on the Plan of Action. By reaffirming the Geneva principles, the Tunis Summit also restated that freedom of expression and the free flow of information, ideas and knowledge are essential for the information society. The European Union will strive to implement this global consensus on the role of human rights in the Information Society.
In Tunis we reaffirmed our commitment to bridge the digital divide and recognized the important role of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in promoting the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. The EU is determined to implement the policy recommendations of the Tunis Agenda in its development policy.
The EU also believes that we need to take a comprehensive view on digital solidarity. While stressing the need to focus on the mobilisation of resources through existing financial mechanisms, we welcome the establishment of the Digital Solidarity Fund (DSF) last year in Geneva as a voluntary and complementary financial mechanism for funding the Information Society.
*Croatia and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia continue to be part of the Stabilisation and Association Process.
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