The Commission has opened an online public consultation of radio frequency identification on how to ensure that the growing use of RFID boosts the competitiveness of the EU economy while safeguarding personal data. On the Your Voice in Europe web site, Reding invited people to contribute to the debate, for a communication planned for December 2006.
The EU began looking at the RFID sector when it launched a public consultation on the subject in March at the CeBit 2006 trade fair in Hannover, Germany. We must harness the technology and create the right opportunities for its use for wider public good, said Reding at the time.
A final conference is scheduled for October that will present the main outcomes of the online consultations and workshops. The findings will be presented to an audience of experts and decision makers, and then the Commission will provide an assessment that will be presented to the European Parliament and Council.
Reding has not been far from the headlines recently. Recently she raised the hackles of Europe’s telecom incumbents with her idea of forced separation of their retail services from wholesale units. The former journalist also angered European mobile operators after threatening to impose regulations to force them to reduce the high cost of using a mobile phone when abroad.
However, she has won backing for her stance over regulatory holidays. Over the past six months she has clashed repeatedly with the German regulator and the draft law going through the German parliament that will allow a regulatory holiday for five years of Deutsche Telekom AG’s new high-speed fiber-optic network.
The spat began last November when the Bonn, Germany-based carrier lobbied the new coalition government of Chancellor Angela Merkel over its new network to ensure it achieved adequate returns. It said it would spend 3bn euros ($3.5bn) over two years to upgrade large parts of its network.
