The vision is for a Single European Electronic Market (SEEM) accessible and affordable to all businesses, organisations and individuals of any nature, size and geographic location, with no technological, cultural or linguistic restraints. The SEEM will allow the dynamic creation and operation of collaborative structures, to trade goods, services or work, in a peer-to-peer manner in the knowledge economy.
This ambition is fully in line with the aims of the i2010 strategy to reinvigorate and refocus the Lisbon Agenda. According to it, main priorities are the Single European Information Space, deployment of ICT and its adoption by business, and inclusion with particular attention to SMEs.
Many challenges have to be properly taken up and solutions found to meet the goal set. This analysis is presently carried out by the SEEMseed project, funded by the European Commission in the frame of the “Policy-orientated Research” priority. The first achieved results indicate that, besides solving the many scientific and technological, cultural, regulatory and socio-economic problems that have been identified, a critical factor is the uptake of the SEEM concept by an audience that has the power to support and promote its implementation and deployment on political basis at the European, national and regional scale.
This is the rationale behind the organisation of the Workshop. It is addressed to a wide audience of policy makers and stakeholders from academia, industry and organisations of different types to discuss with them the SEEM concept and the conditions for its implementation in the i2010 perspective.
After presenting the long term vision, the Information Space for SMEs is analysed by top-level speakers in terms of general implications and concrete challenges.
