
Article 1 

1. This Decision establishes a Community programme for the period 2005 to 2008 to make digital content in Europe more accessible, usable and exploitable, facilitating the creation and diffusion of information, in areas of public interest, at Community level.The programme shall be known as the‘eContentplus’ programme (hereinafter the Programme).
2. In order to attain the overall aim of the Programme, the following lines of action shall be addressed:
(a) facilitating at Community level access to digital content, its use and exploitation;
(b) facilitating improvement of quality and enhancing best practice related to digital content between content providers and users, and across sectors;
(c) reinforcing cooperation between digital content stakeholders and awareness.
The activities to be carried out under those lines of action target areas of public sector information, spatial data and educational, cultural and scientific content as set out in Annex I. The Programme shall be implemented in accordance with Annex II.
Article 2 

1. Participation in the Programme shall be open to legal entities established in the Member States. It shall also be open to participation of legal entities established in the candidate countries in accordance with bilateral agreements in existence or to be concluded with those countries.
2. Participation in the Programme may be opened to legal entities established in EFTA States which are contracting parties to the EEA Agreement, in accordance with the provisions of that Agreement.
3. Participation in the Programme may be opened, without financial support by the Community, to legal entities established in third countries and to international organisations, where such participation contributes effectively to the implementation of the Programme. The decision to allow such participation shall be adopted in accordance with the procedure referred to in Article 4(2).
Article 3 

1. The Commission shall be responsible for the implementation of the Programme.
2. The Commission shall draw up a work programme on the basis of this Decision.
3. In the implementation of the Programme, the Commission shall, in close cooperation with the Member States, ensure general consistency and complementarity with other relevant Community policies, programmes and actions that impinge upon the development and use of European digital content and the promotion of linguistic diversity in the information society, in particular the Community research and technological development programmes, IDA, eTEN, eInclusion, eLearning, Modinis and Safer Internet.
4. The Commission shall act in accordance with the procedure referred to in Article 4(2) for the purposes of the following:
(a) adoption and modifications of the work programme;
(b) determination of the criteria and content of calls for proposals, in line with the objectives set out in Article 1;
(c) assessment of the projects proposed under calls for proposals for Community funding of an estimated amount of Community contribution equal to, or more than, EUR 1 million;
(d) any departure from the rules set out in Annex II.
5. The Commission shall inform the committee referred to in Article 4 of progress with the implementation of the Programme.
Article 4 

1. The Commission shall be assisted by a committee.
2. Where reference is made to this paragraph, Articles 4 and 7 of Decision 1999/468/EC shall apply, having regard to the provisions of Article 8 thereof.The period laid down in Article 4(3) of Decision 1999/468/EC shall be set at three months.
3. The Committee shall adopt its rules of procedure.
Article 5 

1. In order to ensure that Community aid is used efficiently, the Commission shall ensure that actions under this Decision are subject to prior appraisal, follow-up and subsequent evaluation.
2. The Commission shall monitor the implementation of projects under the Programme. The Commission shall evaluate the manner in which the projects have been carried out and the impact of their implementation in order to assess whether the original objectives have been achieved.
3. The Commission shall report on the implementation of the lines of action referred to in Article 1(2) to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions by mid-2006 at the latest. In this context, the Commission shall report on the consistency of the amount for 2007 to 2008 with the financial perspective. If applicable, the Commission shall take the necessary steps within the budgetary procedures for 2007 to 2008 to ensure the consistency of the annual appropriations with the financial perspective. The Commission shall submit a final evaluation report at the end of the Programme.
4. The Commission shall forward the results of its quantitative and qualitative evaluations to the European Parliament and the Council together with any appropriate proposals for the amendment of this Decision. The results shall be forwarded before presentation of the draft general budget of the European Union for the years 2007 and 2009 respectively.
Article 6 

1. The financial framework for the implementation of the Community actions under this Decision for the period from 1 January 2005 to 31 December 2008 is hereby set at EUR 149 million, of which EUR 55,6 million is for the period until 31 December 2006.
2. For the period following 31 December 2006, the amount shall be deemed to be confirmed if it is consistent for this phase with the financial perspective in force for the period commencing in 2007.
3. The annual appropriations for the period from 2005 to 2008 shall be authorised by the budgetary authority within the limits of the financial perspective. An indicative breakdown of expenditure is given in Annex III.
Done at Strasbourg, 9 March 2005.
For the European Parliament
The President
J. P. BORRELL FONTELLES
For the Council
The President
N. SCHMIT
ANNEX I
I. 
eContentplus has the overall aim of making digital content in Europe more accessible, usable and exploitable, facilitating the creation and diffusion of information, in areas of public interest, at Community level.

It will create better conditions for accessing and managing digital content and services in multilingual and multicultural environments. It will broaden users' choice and support new ways of interacting with knowledge-enhanced digital content, a feature which is becoming essential to make content more dynamic and tailored to specific contexts (learning, cultural, people with special needs, etc.).

The Programme will pave the way for a structured framework for quality digital content in Europe — The European Digital Content Area — by facilitating transfer of experiences, best practice and cross-fertilisation between content sectors, content providers and users.

Three lines of action are foreseen:
((a)) facilitating at Community level access to digital content, its use and exploitation;
((b)) facilitating improvement of quality and enhancing best practice related to digital content between content providers and users, and across sectors;
((c)) reinforcing cooperation between digital content stakeholders and awareness.

II.  A. 
The activities to be carried out under this line of action encompass the establishment of networks and alliances between stakeholders, encouraging the creation of new services.

Target areas are public sector information, spatial data, learning and cultural content.

Focus will be on:
((a)) supporting a wider recognition of the importance of public sector information (PSI), its commercial value and associated societal implications of its use. Activities shall improve effective cross-border use and exploitation of PSI between public sector organisations and private companies, including SMEs, for added-value information products and services;
((b)) encouraging a wider use of spatial data by public sector bodies, private companies, including SMEs, and citizens through cooperation mechanisms at European level. Activities should tackle both technical and organisational issues, avoiding duplications and underdeveloped territorial data sets. They should promote cross-border interoperability, supporting coordination between mapping agencies and fostering the emergence of new services at European level for mobile users. They should also support the use of open standards;
((c)) fostering the proliferation of open European knowledge pools of digital objects, for education and research communities, as well as the individual. The activities will support the creation of trans-European brokering services for digital learning content, with associated business models. The activities should also encourage the use of open standards, and the creation of large user groups analysing and testing pre-standardisation and specifications schemes with a view to conveying European multilingual and multicultural aspects into the process of definition of global standards for digital learning content;
((d)) promoting the emergence of trans-European information infrastructures for accessing and using high quality European digital cultural and scientific resources through the linking of virtual libraries, community memories, etc. Activities should encompass coordinated approaches to digitisation and collection building, preservation of digital objects and inventories of cultural and scientific digital resources. They should improve access to digital cultural and scientific assets through effective licensing schemes and collective pre-emptive clearing of rights.
 B. 
The activities to be carried out under this line of action are intended to facilitate the identification and wide diffusion of best practice in methods, processes and operations to achieve higher quality, greater efficiency and effectiveness in the creation, use and distribution of digital content.

These activities encompass experiments that demonstrate searchability, usability, reusability, composability and interoperability of digital content within the context of the existing legal framework while meeting from the early stage of the process the requirements of different target groups and markets in an increasingly multilingual and multicultural environment, and extending beyond mere localisation technologies.

These activities will exploit the benefits of enhancing digital content with machine‐understandable data (semantically well-defined metadata based on relevant descriptive terminology, vocabularies and ontologies).

The experiments will be conducted in thematic clusters. The gathering, dissemination and cross-sector fertilisations of gained knowledge will be an integral part of the experiments.

Target application areas are public sector information, spatial data, digital learning and cultural content, as well as scientific and scholarly digital content.
 C. 
The activities to be carried out under this line of action include measures accompanying relevant legislation relating to digital content, and fostering increased collaboration between digital content stakeholders, as well as awareness building. These activities will support the development of benchmarking, monitoring and analysis tools, the impact assessment of the Programme and the dissemination of results. They will identify and analyse emerging opportunities and problems (e.g. trust, quality marking, intellectual property rights in education) and propose, as appropriate, solutions.

ANNEX II
 1. The Commission will implement the Programme in accordance with the technical content specified in Annex I.
 2. The Programme will be executed through indirect action comprising:

((a)) shared-cost actions

((i)) Projects designed to increase knowledge so as to improve existing products, processes and/or services and/or to meet the needs of Community policies. The Community funding will normally not exceed 50 % of the cost of the project. Public sector bodies may be reimbursed on the basis of 100 % of additional costs.
((ii)) Best practice actions to spread knowledge. They will normally be conducted in thematic clusters and linked through thematic networks. The Community contribution for the measures set out under this point will be limited to direct costs deemed necessary or appropriate for achieving the specific objectives of the action.
((iii)) Thematic networks: networks bringing together a variety of stakeholders around a given technological and organisational objective, so as to facilitate coordination activities and the transfer of knowledge. They may be linked to best practice actions. Support will be granted towards the additional eligible costs of coordinating and implementing the network. The Community participation may cover the additional eligible costs of these measures;
((b)) accompanying measures
Accompanying measures will contribute to the implementation of the Programme or the preparation of future activities. Measures devoted to the commercialisation of products, process or services, marketing activities and sales promotion are excluded.

((i)) Studies in support of the Programme, including the preparation of future activities.
((ii)) Exchange of information, conferences, seminars, workshops or other meetings and the management of clustered activities.
((iii)) Dissemination, information and communication activities. 3. The selection of shared-cost actions will be based on calls for proposals published on the Commission's Internet site in accordance with the financial provisions in force.
 4. Applications for Community support should provide, where appropriate, a financial plan listing all the components of the funding of the projects, including the financial support requested from the Community, and any other requests for or grants of support from other sources.
 5. Accompanying measures will be implemented through calls for tenders in accordance with the financial provisions in force.

ANNEX III

1. Facilitating at Community level access to digital content, its use and exploitation 40 to 50 %
2. Facilitating improvement of quality and enhancing best practice related to digital content between content providers and users, and across sectors 45 to 55 %
3. Reinforcing cooperation between digital content stakeholders and awareness 8 to 12 %