EU Council: Decision on the adoption of a multiannual programme to promote the linguistic diversity of the Community in the information society

IRIS 1997-1:1/6

Ad van Loon

European Audiovisual Observatory

In IRIS 1996-10: 3 we reported that on 8 October 1996, the EU Telecommunication Council approved a programme for the promotion of linguistic diversity in the Information Society. At that stage, however, the final decision had not yet been adopted. The final decision was adopted on 21 November 1996.

The programme contains the following actions lines, which are described in more detail in Annex 1 to the Council's Decision: 1. Support for the creation of a framework of services for language resources and encouragement for the associations involved in such a construction; 2. Encouragement for the use of language technologies, resources and standards and their incorporation into computer applications; 3. Promotion of the use of advanced language tools in the Community and Member States public sector; and, 4. Accompanying measures such as promoting technical standards which meet the linguistic needs of users, organizing concertation and coordination between the principal operators involved in developing a multilingual information society, and assessing progress made towards the multilingual information society, and identifying remaining barriers. The programme will run for a period of three years, starting on 21 November 1996 for which ECU 15 million will be made available. 29%-38% of this budget will be reserved for each of the first three action lines referred to above, while 4%-9% of this budget will be reserved for the accompanying measures.