Economic and social cohesion and information society

In adopting the report by Mrs Angela del Carmen SIERRA GONZALEZ (GUE/NGL, E), the European Parliament expressed the view that applications for less-developed regions should be geared to the development of integrated systems to meet basic human needs, particularly in rural areas and island and outlying communities, and concentrate on universal access and local content, with equal attention being devoted to the development of the physical infrastructure and of human resources. As regards access to the Internet, in particular, Parliament called for easily accessible workstations in publicly accessible places of collective interest (libraries, schools, chambers of commerce, recreational centres, etc); this implied that the inclusion of ISDN as a component of the universal service must be envisaged in the short term. In order to protect the interests of less-favoured regions of the Union, Parliament called for state and regional funding to be used to ensure the full participation of these areas in the information society, and called on the Commission to make available specific across-the-board budgetary resources to promote cohesion. Parliament called on the Commission to step up international cooperation and also to assist the countries which were approaching accession in preparing for the information society and to improve communications with other regions in order to promote the global information society. �