Christine Oddy, MEP for Coventry and North Warwickshire, on behalf of the European Parliament’s Legal Affairs Committee will be supporting moves by the Commission to establish a clear and comprehensive legal framework for the increasingly important field of electronic commerce and other information services. She will however be tabling a number of amendments which aim at clarifying further the legal responsibilities of service providers and at improving consumer protection.

Ms Oddy fully supports the main principle behind the Commission proposal, namely that information society services should, subject to a number of exceptions, comply with the legislation in the country where the service provider is established.

As far as consumer issued are concerned, she wants to strengthen the text as regards the sending of unsolicited e-mail - a practice known as "spamming". While the Commission has only proposed that junk mail must be easily identified as such, the amendments go further and introduce an obligation for member states to ensure that consumers can avoid receiving junk mail altogether by having themselves entered in an opt-out register.

Ms Oddy agreed in principle with the Commission's proposal to limit the liability of on-line service providers for transmitting and storing third party information necessary for tracing and Identifying providers of illegal content, as long as this does not violate EU rules on data protection. She is also calling for the list of companies subject to limitations on liability to be extended to include companies providing Internet access. She agrees with the Commission that the directive should not apply at all to certain fields, such as taxation, but also considers that it should not apply to television and radio services either.

Christine Oddy said:

"With electronic commerce growing at such a rapid pace it is essential that we have legislation across our continent which safeguards users while encouraging its development as a way of doing business."