A huge Europe-wide IT project, which will involve issuing more than 160m smart cards by the end of the decade, has just been announced. It will dwarf David Blunkett's ID card scheme, but the chances are that you haven't even heard of it.
Perhaps this is because it is European, and plans from this source often seem to catch Britain by surprise. Thirteen of the European Union's current and new members (joining on May 1) are introducing the European health insurance card from June 1. It will replace national health insurance cards used by everyone in countries including France and Germany. Previously, travellers had to apply for an E111 form or similar for access to EU countries' health services.
The cards issued from June will not have a chip, but a smart card version will be introduced towards the end of the decade. A computer network allowing health insurance claims to flow between EU countries is also planned, using the smart technology.
"The European health insurance card will be another piece of Europe in your pocket," said European commission president Romano Prodi; a similar phrase was used for the euro. Like euros, the cards will have one side designed by the issuing nation and the other standard across the EU.
Although it will be issued only to those who want it, the Department of Health says that it will start producing cards only by the end of 2005, the last date allowed by the EU. The UK will issue cards centrally, and there are no plans to move to smart cards.
Projects and legislation affecting UK IT are often decided or heavily affected by European institutions. For example, the commission rather than the member states fined Microsoft €497m for breaking EU competition law, although the fine was agreed by individual countries. More significantly, laws affecting trade are often decided by European directives aiming to create a "common market" across the European Union. But when IT meets security, such as on the extent of state-sponsored bugging, countries make up their own minds - and the UK normally takes a much harder line than anyone else.
Directives, which compel countries to enact laws but leave them to decide how, are agreed by the commission, European parliament and the council of ministers (the relevant government ministers from each member state), and those ministers havefinal say. The process can be slow: the data privacy directive negotiated in Europe from 1990-95, was implemented in the UK's Data Protection Act 1998, and came into force in 2001, 11 years later.
Implementions vary widely, according to Shelagh Gaskill, head of information law for law firm Masons. She says the Spanish privacy commissioner is known to come down hard on those who break data protection law: "The fines can be huge: €1m is not uncommon," she says.
The UK information commissioner takes a softer approach, first asking organisations to change their ways, then issuing an enforcement notice and only then going to court - where the largest fine and costs Gaskill has heard of totalled £5,000. Similarly, there are big differences in penalties for sending spam, although it has been banned in the EU.
Gaskill thinks that those seeking to influence IT legislation must do so at the European level. "There's no point in lobbying London if you miss the boat in Europe," she says. "The room for manoeuvre is limited in London."
So what is coming our way? On March 9, the European parliament passed a draft directive on enforcement of intellectual property rights by 330 votes to 151; if passed by the council of ministers (which is likely), member states will have to implement it by early 2006. Some civil rights campaigners compared it to the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which media firms have used to charge teenagers for illegally downloading music. It didn't help that the directive's rapporteur (member leading it through the parliament) was French MEP Janelly Fourtou, married to Jean-René Fourtou, chief executive of Vivendi Universal.
Professor Sir Neil MacCormick, an MEP for the Scottish National party, voted against the directive. He says the directive gives more power to patent holders, which could hit producers of generic medicines, and extends patents to cover software, specifically that embedded in hardware. He says this is of concern, depending on legal interpretation. The US already allows software patents, generating many court battles, for example SCO's claims over open source operating system Linux.
But MacCormick says there is not too much to worry teenage file-swappers. "You've got to stop counterfeiting and piracy - it's a serious problem - but what you want to do is deal with commercial-scale infringements," he says. Sections of the directive were altered to target commercial-scale piracy rather than individuals, although MacCormick thinks this caveat should have been applied to the whole directive.
Those who see the June 10 European elections as irrelevant may note that MEPs do affect the UK's IT laws - possibly more than MPs.
European health insurance card
http://europa.eu.int/comm/employment_social
Draft European directive on the enforcement of intellectual property rights
http://www3.europarl.eu.int
European Parliament
www.europarl.eu.int
MEPs Malcolm Harbour and Arlene McCarthy support the directive
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3501964.stm
IP Justice campaigned against the directive
www.ipjustice.org
