22-23 January 2014, Palau de Pedralbes, Barcelona, Spain:
The European Union (EU) is currently revising its legislation around e-signature which should be adopted and published once the Council reaches an agreement, expectedly by summer 2014.
Within this context, the EU is keen to promote e-signature solutions for e-business development in the Euro Mediterranean region. Mediterranean countries, private stakeholders and the civil society are supportive of this initiative and have demonstrated great interest to cooperate toward this goal at the EC explanatory seminar last November in Amman, and even more so recently at the final exploratory seminar held in Barcelona. This exploratory seminar, co-hosted by the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM), was attended by around 60 government and private stakeholders from over 19 different European and Southern Mediterranean countries.
Claire-Marie Healy, Policy Manager at GSMA, participated in one of the stakeholder panels of discussion on “easing access to best practice on e-trust services”. Exchange of best practice amongst Euro Mediterranean countries came out as a key recommendation to help building a common understanding on e-signature solutions and the development of e-business in the Euro Mediterranean region. As a practical solution, the creation of a multi-stakeholder ‘network of experts’ for electronic trust services was recommended in order to raise awareness and understanding of what the key business benefits of electronic signature and trust services in the region are. The GSMA will be taking part in this ‘network of experts’.
Further recommendations such as establishing a dynamic survey on the status of electronic trust services in the Euro Mediterranean region, creating national e-trust services list, defining a common terminology and converging laws and principles on electronic trust services and e-commerce in particular as a use case were also recommended.
Participants also agreed that the involvement of the south Euro Mediterranean region with the standardisation work currently going on within ETSI and at international level is a key step to achieve cross-border interoperability. The final Common Conclusions of this seminar have now been reported on to the Foreign Affairs Senior Officials of the 43 Members of the UfM at their meeting on 28 January.
The programme of this exploratory seminar as well as final list of key recommendations are published on the European Commission’s website.