 I'm going to speak fairly briefly to set perhaps to stimulate you into some serious dialogue and points that we want to write so I hope we can have a lively discussion because I think that's what these sort of meetings are all about and it's a privilege to be invited to come to here, the slightly difficult mnemonic to remember but David Walker has been pursuing me for some time Ond o'r ddaf yn ymweld. Rwy'n meddwl am yr ardalol yn y gweithio arall yma. A byddwn i'n cael ei wneud i ddim yn gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r Gymru, Jim Nicholson, yn Belfast, yn gweithio'r gweithio'r cymunedau yn Belfast a'r gweithio'r gweithio'r llanelau a'r cymdeithasau a'r cyflwyno ddau newydd o David Harman, mae'r cyfnod Gagin Cwyns. Ac so,先 Thinking found me a dyfodd o'r fath am gyfrasad gen i. First I was in Belfast last night with Owen Patersen, a he a friend of mine to come down here today. It's nice to be back here, because as you mentioned again as I did, I used to come here about once a month. I didn't start the distribution of Rover cars back in the 1920's I think, I'm not that old yet. Even though I'm a grandfather. But it was an interesting time and when I actually took over the responsibility for it, the managing director Herman O'Brown, who I knew very well, Mae'r bwysig i'r Llyfrgell yn fawr bwysig i'r Llyfrgell yn ddau'r Gwyrd Llyfrgell, neu rwy'n ddwy'n ddylch yn ddod i'r ddweud. Felly, mae'n ddweud i'r honno i ddweud i'r nodi'r Gwyrd Llyfrgellau a'r ddweud i'r ddweud i'r llan. Felly, mae'r unrhyw gwybod i'r llawdd iddyn nhw. Felly, mae'r ddweud i'r ymdweud. Felly, oedd yn gwneud cyfnod. One I thought I would do is not to talk about a lot of detailed issues, which I'm sure you will all effect it. So when you said the whole issue of creating and getting the digital work in context of everything that we are doing in the European institutions, because obviously the European Parliament is one of the key European institutions. Ond y cyhoedd ymlaen y holl yw rhaid o bwnghau ei bwnghau cyhoedd hefyd. Siw'r cyhoedd cyhoedd cyhoedd Cymru yn blaenol. A'r cyhoedd mwyn amgylch i bwnghau cyhoedd cyhoedd cyhoedd cyhoedd cyhoedd cyhoedd cyhoedd cyhoedd. A'r ysgolwm sy'n ddysgu'n i ni am y maen nhw yng nghymru i'w hanfodol ran ffantai cyhoedd cyhoedd cyhoedd cyhoedd cyhoedd cyhoedd cyhoedd. Felly, mae'n gwaith eich cyfnod, ac mae'n gweithio'r cyflwytoedd cyffredinol iawn, mae'n gweithio, mae'n gweithio'r cyflwytoedd, ond mae'n gweithio'r llwyddiadau, ond mae'n gweithio'r gwaith nôl ymlaeniau. Mae'n gweithio'r cyflwytoedd cyflwytoedd yn ei gweithio'r bethau yn ymgyrch. Mae'n gweithio'r cyflwytoedd gan ymddangos eich hynny, ..y'r sgol derbyn oedd y ddigitaliaeth yn meddwl y cychwyn yw llawer o amser o'r rhaglenu. Mae gael i'r syniadau ac yn gweithio bodpolit.. ..y'r syniadau enfynol o bobl, ac yn mynd i'r sgol yn blaen o'r gwas Robertson... ...y'r cynharag ar y cyflafedd cyfnodol, ac yn fwybod y cilyrdau... ..lyny'n hawdd ar eu cyfanol mwyodol ac yn ychydigio yr uneddiad... ..y'n mynd i'r cyflafdd ar gweithio ac yn sawr o'r cyflafydd... ac mae'n deall cael ei wneud o'r adaelau o'r gweithio a'r adeiladau o'r adeiladau, a'r awdraith yn hyn ychydig o'r systemau ffaliadol. Mae'r ffordd oedd ymellafol yn ymwelch â'i ffordd, ac yn ddau cwmfawr yn arweinyddio. O'r ffordd, gallwn i'n bwysig, mae'r ffordd o'r adeiladau eich bod yn ymddangos ymellafol, ac mae'n bwysig o'r adeiladau, ac mae'n bywch yn ymellafol. Mae'r adeiladau o'r adeiladau, oherwydd mae'n meddwl. I'm not sure I've got enough for everybody, but this is the summary of a single market act, and you'll see the title of it together for new growth is exactly the same, the single market is absolutely indispensable for accelerating the growth of the European economy out of the session. And so I suppose the global point I would make to you, first of all in encompassing this together, is that while a huge amount of attention understandably, and particularly in this country, is being focused on the future of a single growth in currency, and maybe there will be questions about that, but the fact remains is that while that's been going on, there was a lot of other work being going on, some of it in more public space, but a lot behind the scenes, to say that underpinning Europe's recovery, as well as solving the problems that Europe has got to be, to build on our huge competitive advantage of getting a single market to work across 27 countries, because if we don't seize that competitive advantage then we will sink further down the lead table. And interestingly, the second exhibit I just wanted to link into that, because in a way, it's a question that I get all the time, where people say, well how do you reconcile being a Eurosceptic British Conservative with all the things you're doing in Europe? Well I certainly wouldn't describe myself as a Eurosceptic, but the contemporary phrase now is a Eurorealist, because I think we are taking a more realistic view about what we can achieve, and how we can achieve it, and how quickly we can achieve it, and the fact that he's not always being a central artist of regulatory projects that will solve issues. But interestingly, part of the inspiration for this title, Together for New Growth, came from this. This is about the Paul Let's Choose approach, and it's actually, on the back, comes from the Prime Minister's office, I'll send down his truth. And this actually came out before the Single Market Act, at a time when Michel Barnier was looking for a title. And interestingly, when Michel Barnier came to our committee to launch the Single Market Act, he held out this chart from this pamphlet, and he said, I'm very attentive to Malcolm Parker and Daisy Cameron for giving me this chart, which shows what will happen if we then get our act together. But it's basically, this is 2010, with Germany, UK, France, and Italy, who are the top 10 world economists, and here we are turning off the rules again. The fact that in 2050, Downing Street had found an economic study which said France was behind the UK. It was a peak to Mr Barnier. But this is focusing people's attention on what competitiveness is all about. And other policies, like innovation, which we're going to talk about, and I'm going to be talking about in Belfast tomorrow, are also part of this. So where does the digital Single Market fit in all this? Well, the paradox I think about the impact of the internet as a commercial tool, as a tool for commerce, is that within the European economic space, it hasn't actually, I think, delivered the sort of benefits that people expect of it. And so we need to understand why that is, and how it varies because of the legislation, or how it varies because of consumer attitudes. And another interesting piece of work that's just come out, and I'm sorry to deceive you with references, but this is a research organisation, so I'm sure that the efficient today people will send you a compendium with links and where you can download all these documents afterwards. This is a new publication, which hasn't had much publicity, but it's something that we asked for in the committee. So you can see we work very well with the European Commission and Michel Barnier in a very good relationship in terms of taking political initiatives and moving things forward. And this is, despite that, of course, the Commission retains the right initiative in the European institutions, but sometimes it exercises them quite softly and does listen very attentively to what we have to say. We wanted to focus on getting the Single Market to have real traction with European citizens, and particularly citizen consumers, because part of the problem is, and this is a well-known praise I think that the Jack de Law once said, is that no need can fall in love with the Single Market. And it is perhaps a dry concept, but actually if you think about the entitlements that European citizens should have from a fully functioning Single Market, the ability to go and live and work and raise a family in any part of the European Union, and similarly for businesses the right to sell goods to established businesses that offer services in any part of the European Union. And if you think of them in terms of entitlements, our task as politicians is to say how well those entitlements are being delivered. One of the things we asked the Commission was, how much do we know about what citizens really think about their entitlements of the European economic space? Because actually in terms of the psychology of the Single Market, where it really impacts on individual citizens, we're notably failing to deliver. This paper, which is a working document, which is rather a nice type of a Single Market through the lens of the people, a snapshot of citizens and businesses 20 main concerns, that these aren't in any particular order. But interestingly, a concern number 13, Europeans do not feel comfortable shopping online in other words, and so the first point in now moving from the big picture to the specific picture is I think that we absolutely underestimated the need to deal with the consumers lack of security and understanding about their rights actually shopping cross-order. Because that is one of the reasons why predominantly, if you look at all the data, that online shopping is still predominantly within the same mental space. In many cases it's grown very actively, it's a major activity, it's very important to the economy. But if we really see it as a tool for making the Single Market work, we're not actually doing very well. But it's interesting now that it appears here as part of the scores here. I mean, there are a whole lot of other stuff in here, again, which is all part of that. You know, not surprisingly, internet and telephone services could be cheaper, mobile phone roping. There's things about problems that people experience in moving to other countries, taking their car with them, having to apply for residence permits, getting their children to school, whatever. But all the things that people expect ought to happen in the Single Market. So, one of the things that my committee has been working on recently is, first of all, to try and agree and get agreement on a core set of consumer rights online, essentially a distant centre, about people's contractual rights. The contractual terms, the pre-contractual information that people will get if they're undertaking a transaction, their right to reject an article, their right to return it, who pays for the cost of return, their ability to contact someone, contact information, a cooling off period if they're taking a long term contract, all those sort of things. And that is now in place, and we're hoping that that will significantly improve matters, but actually it needs communication. And even though we can provide people with these rights, how many people actually know what rights they have? The commission has just done a very interesting study, which again you can find on the GG Health and Consumer Protection website, called consumer empowerment in the Single Market. And what is remarkable there is, first of all, how few consumers know what rights they have now in the existing system. But secondly, the remarkable variation about that level of knowledge in the country is the country. And what's interesting here, and this is by no means unusual, is that the country where consumers have more awareness of their rights in this whole area is not even a member of European Union and that's Norway. And one of the reasons I think why Norway are setting the pace here, and by the way, if you look at the Single Market generally, that Norway complies more fully and more quickly with Single Market regulations than any other country who is a member of the European Union. In areas like public procurement, we see that Norway is setting the pace in consumer rights in particular, where in Norway they have a very good system of consumer ombudsman or alternative dispute resolution, whatever you want to call it, in different sectors. Which is covered by a very light touch framework in the Norwegian people authorities, where each sector has set up their own purpose-built consumer ombudsman process, which Norwegian consumers value and are aware of. And one of the things that will be coming to us shortly is a proposal from the Commission to try and provide a framework to encourage other countries to do this. And I use that word advisedly, because it's clearly not something where you will have a single European regulation to do this, because they need to tailor made essentially in individual countries. So, these sort of soft things, like dealing with disputes online and having online agreements, encouraging consumers to take advantage of that are critically important. I think that obviously consumers need to be aware of that as well. We need to make consumers aware of rights that they have when they shop online. The other thing is, of course, giving consumers much more confidence about, first of all, the transaction itself, about giving their credit card or bank card details, actually making the payments in a secure environment, and also how their data is going to be used in some sort of marketing and promotional message. So personal information protection and security are very important. Now, as far as payment transactions are concerned, I think it's fair to say, and I know that a number of people from the banking community, it's fair to say that actually we make real improvements in payment security, but the fact remains is that people still feel insecure about offering their payment details into a computer, whereas they still seem perfectly prepared to go to a restaurant and allow the waiter to take away their credit card and process it somewhere else. So even that is now finally coming to an end because they bring the machine to you. So I would say that industry and consumer groups, if we're going to get the single market to work properly, have got some work to do here around all of these soft factors about dealing with complaints about security. We are going to have more reforms about how personal data is collected and used, which we worked on as part of a telecom package specifically for companies in the electronic communications sector, which are now going to be extended more broadly. But we're still in some way getting to new proposals on that. But for example, and this again is not generally known at all, it's had very little publicity, but companies in the electronic communications sector are now obliged to comply with their requirements for notifying consumers if their personal data is breached, if there's a security letter, personal data is breached, data breach notification, and Mrs Reging is now responsible for that. Having moved in 2009 to regard to justice and home affairs has already indicated that that will become part of a newer form of the general data protection legislation so that we will have formal requirements for data breach notification for anybody who holds data, whether it's held electronically or not. So these sort of things are important, and the other thing that I know has caused consternation with some, which is still baffling me, rather given what we thought was a very clear expression of that in the privileged way. It is about how website operators use personal data in engaging with the customers through cookies and other devices, which many customers value. And there was never any intention when we dropped to this legislation to have any sort of provision that would require separate approval every time you made a transaction with an internet site. What was asked for was that the first time a customer makes a contact and you offer the customer the opportunity to, if you like, become a friend of our website to get offers of the customers to you, that you actually consent to that transaction. And that was what was in the proposal to begin with. It seems to cause a lot of problem around the place, rather than my surprise, but if anyone is concerned about that, that is what was intended. Now, so all of those things we've been working on. So, and then alongside that will become other things, which will help the process, but are not necessarily, in my view, so much part of the consumer transaction. Electronic signatures, authentication, I think is very much crucial to getting more online business to business transactions. In some areas it will have a consumer presence as well. And indeed, in things like online banking, we're seeing more electronic authentication devices and other things developing. So there is a sort of standards, a legal and recognition challenge coming up, and those will be on our workload for next year. So that's a sort of picture around some of the consumer things that we're working on. And just to sort of round off the picture, it's to say to you that one of the fundamental pieces of legislation, which I think was a very far sighted piece of legislation, and I would say that because I started working on it in 1999 and 2000, is the e-commerce directive. And the e-commerce directive was passed by the European Commission all that time ago, and I think has actually provided a good basis for moving online transactions forward. Now, one of the most difficult areas on that, which is coming up in the discussion, is what is the role of internet service providers, the trusted intermediary role. And because the e-commerce directive actually gave them a very specific role, where they're not deemed to be responsible for the content that they have, but with a notice of takedown provision, that if people complain about the site and they are required to take it down, and as you know, those of you that I'm sure questions about copyright will come up, that is also one of the issues that telecom regulators and others are having to deal with. So, all of those things will be in the frame, and the commission is currently consulting on the e-commerce directive at the moment. My own personal view is very important not to destabilise, I think, the position we have at the moment, because, as I've indicated, I think that the online marketplace is not yet delivering the benefits it should do in making the site. I think that a single market will work better, and there are other things to talk about as well, I'm sure we'll come up in the discussion. Now, just to surround all this off, and then we'll perhaps have some questions, I think that since 2009, with this parliament and this commission, we're getting much, much better at working on all these complementary policy issues. You know, the Single Market Act, I think, involved about 16 European commissioners who own different parts of the single market fact. I think there are some parts of the single market, by the way, that we have fully integrated, so I think transport in particular. You know, the role of logistics, transport and postal services, and by the way, those are crucial also in online, if you'd have a consumer complaint online. Because consumers are still worried that they will actually get the article delivered if they order something from Dublin, from a supplier in Estonia, for example. You know, there are still worries about whether it could be delivered in the right condition and how quickly. There was, we know, the online delivery service is now working extremely efficiently across Europe, and they very much benefitted them, and are being part of the key intermediaries in making the single market online work successful. So, that is included in the Single Market Act. Online payments, getting online payment costs down, enabling small amounts of payments online, particularly with mobile devices, mobile commerce, all of those things will be on the agenda. And it goes without saying that underpinning all of this is of course the availability of high quality, good value mobile broadband services. I won't say cheap because I think that undervalues it, but it does need to be good value for money and it needs to encourage investment. And it goes without saying that that, so in a way the telecom legislation, which I've worked on and many of you are interested in, is part of this whole underpinning of what we need to do. But I think let's not forget the business to business happens as well because that is also crucial and in my view that needs to work better. I mean there's an astonishingly low amount still of online transactions and business to business transactions that's still going on. And in areas like public procurement for example, which is another of the areas that my committee is currently looking at, a major reform of public procurement. I mean more e-procurement from public authorities and done in a way that would encourage small enterprises to be able to make bids into public authorities, I think will be a crucial labour of the business to business market. So I've talked a lot about business to consumer where I think the dysfunctionalities are, but really business to business also needs to improve and be looked at very substantially. So we're working on all those elements of those things. How do politicians, how do you respond to some of these more difficult issues which involve lots of other different committees and different politicians? What we've done in my committee is to set out a working group specifically around completing the digital single market. It's chaired very well by a colleague from Spain, Pablo Arias. They meet together very openly and invite evidence. We can send you their working documents. He presented a report and a presentation to the committee which you can also find on our website. We've also commissioned some interesting research recently which I commend to you because each committee in the European Parliament has a research budget to commission research to help us with our work. We've just done a very interesting study, and this is just a cover of it because it's 130 pages, but you can get a pretty charge on our internet, consumer behaviour in the digital environment, which has a lot of very interesting data and statistics. Actually CULT and PUBLIC sources largely, we haven't commissioned a lot of our own work, original research work, but about what consumers value in the single market, how they use the single market to affect transactions, the role of the internet in facilitating price comparisons, because in thinking about the digital single market we're not just interested in transactions that are completed on the single market. It works in a way that the internet is facilitating a more competitive and open market, and one of the interesting and I think challenging issues in here, which has been supported by a number of studies that have been done in different cultures, is the fact that in many cases consumers can have too much information to do. Even though in theory we're giving them this fantastic choice, if you actually overwhelm the choice they need to go to some sort of trusted intermediaries consumer reports, or they may even use an intermediary in order to help them find the best deals. In areas like insurance you will see it here, there are companies who have set out specifically to intermediate with these very offers on the market with the consumer, and of course creating a new business out of it, which if you started on the single market journey from the beginning you would think wouldn't necessarily arise because consumers would be able to do that for themselves. Similarly we know how important search engines are for consumers, but of course search engine offers and the way that the persons may be presented may not necessarily be there just because of the quality of the product, but because somebody has bought advertising. Issues about transparency here are particularly important. We've also done a study for the digital internal market, again you can find it on our website which looks about issues on electronic signatures and e-procurement and so on. So do have a look if you're interested and just to conclude because I always like to make sure that our promotional work is in line in order you can see that I have been in marketing previously. My committee is a newsletter, we are the first European Parliament committee to do it, a regular newsletter, and if you can become, and I hope you will all become a friend of the income, a friend of the internal marketing consumer collection committee, you can go on to our website, you can sign up to this, it will come electronically to your mailbox before every committee meeting. So it will show you what's on the agenda, it will show you what's being webcast if you want to have a look and see what we're doing. It has links to copies of all the texts that we're working on and also it gives you access directly to the rabble terms of those committees. So we hope that you will become one of the 1,600, we have 1,000, nearly 1,600 people, which isn't a lot in a European context but it's probably a lot more than other committees. So we hope very much that you will want to become our friend. So just as it runs off, it's a great opportunity to come and just share some ideas with you. I look forward to your questions on any of those related topics and indeed any other areas I suspect that may be on your mind on European politics. But I hope that you feel that there are people involved in European policy making soon who understand the cross linkages and the importance of digital activity to the economy. And I think that coming back to this overwhelming problem that we have in Europe, which is to get a much stronger, faster growing economy. An effective, well-functioning digital market in terms of job creation and economic activity is absolutely indispensable to Europe's economic recovery. And I think that's not just me saying that. I think there's lots of evidence. Mackenzie's did a very interesting study for the big seminar of the President's psychosis put on in Doviw, which again you can find I think is around the place. We have copies of it. And the Mackenzie's global study demonstrates this absolutely and has more statistical data. So this isn't just an academic project. It's not just a project for internet geeks and people who are interested in internet shopping. This is fundamental to Europe's economic future. I put it strongly as that, which is why it's really crucial to have this partnership between citizens, consumers, enterprises and public policy. To get a single market really energised. In a month's time we're hoping to get over a thousand people meeting together in Krakow under the patronage of the Polish presidency because Poland is running the European Business Amendment. For the first ever large-scale single market forum. Again you can find details on the website. It's an open activity. There will be workshops. There will be a public display. There will be plenary sessions. There will be lots of my colleagues there as well working on different aspects. And we will have workshops on a lot of the things we've talked about. And that is, I think, an indication that we need to engage more with citizens. This is a pilot project. It may become more decentralised in the future. But I think it's great that the Institute here is so important and so engaged. And I think you are a key player in this partnership. And I know you've done a lot of work on the single market already. So I'm very pleased to be able to come and support that here today. But to say to you, this is the biggest challenge that we face in sustained Europe's competitiveness. And the digital single market is one of the crucial building blocks for the future. Thank you very much.