Standing and Joint Committee meetings – 10 and 11 June 2010

One of the decisions adopted concerns the “Energy Star”, a voluntary energy efficiency labelling programme for office supplies. The Joint Committee also decided to incorporate the EU programme “Interoperability Solutions for European Public Administrations” (ISA) into the EEA Agreement. ISA is a follow-up to the eGovernment programmes IDA and IDABC, in which Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway also participated.

In the Joint Committee, Mr Bernd Langeheine, Director of INFSO and Mr Alexander Willen from the Commission provided a briefing on the Digital Agenda adopted by the Commission in May 2010. This is one of the flagship initiatives of the Europe 2020 Strategy and will have extensive consequences for consumers in the Single Market once implemented. Two of the main elements of the Digital Agenda are to create a single market for online services and to ensure access to basic broadband for all Europeans by 2013.

Mr Stefano Grassi from the General Secretariat of the Commission provided a briefing on the recently published Monti Report on the relaunch of the Single Market. The initiatives in the report will feed into the Europe 2020 Strategy and are likely to consist of EEA relevant legislative proposals. Policy proposals based on the report are expected in the autumn.