The eEurope Initiative and eEurope2002 Action Plan were launched by the European Commission in 1999-2000 to bring Europe on-line. The objective of eEurope is to accelerate the development of the Information Society. The internet penetration in Europe will be growing rapidly in the near future.
The growth of the internet use is restricted by the level of tariffs acces-sing the telecommunication infrastructures and the related services. Therefore, the liberalization of telecommunications to increase competition and reduce prices was very important for making the base of the Europe's Information Society and Europe's New Economy, so called, eEurope.
The liberalization of telecommunications in Europe was started by the European Commission in 1987 with a publication of the Green Paper on the development of the common market for communications services and equipment. The telecommunications regulatory process was expanded by the European Commission. At last, the telecommunications markets were fully liberalized in Europe from 1998.
We should consider that the telecommunications regulatory process was as part of the wider process of the economic integration and Information Society Initiative of Europe. The White Paper on “Growth, Competitiveness and Employment” in 1993 and the Bangeman report in 1994 were published by the Commission. Both reports made reference to Information Society and placed the telecommunications liberalization policy at the heart of the EU's general policy. The result of the development of digital technology, or the digital revolution, has brought about the convergence of the telecommunication, media and information technology sectors. This convergence is discussed from the view of an approaching the Information Society in Europe.
The purpose of this paper is to examine the progress of the European Information Society and the development of the eEurope from the following points of view.
First, we emphasize that the regulatory process for the liberalization of telecommunications and the advancement of the Information Society were dependent on one another in European Union. Second, we examine the contents and the structure on the eEurope 2002 Action Plan.
Third, we examine that the widening of the productivity gap from the rapid growth of labour productivity in the US and the slow growth in the EU since the mid-1990s was determined by the less development of technological progress and the low investment of the information technology in the EU.
Fourth, we stress that the internet penetration will grow fast and then ICT (information and communication technology) expenditure and investment will rise in Europe to become the knowledge-based society in 2010. Because the eEurope Action Plan is build to force benchmarking method to achieve the targets of eEurope and it will continue to function as a rolling action plan after 2002.