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EUROPA SERVER
 
 
The European  Commission has opened a new server on the Internet.  Its name
is EUROPA and  it will provide people  in Europe and elsewhere  with clear,
comprehensive  and up-to-date  information on  the objectives, institutions
and policies of the  European Union.  This initiative is  being launched on
the  eve of the Brussels  meeting of G7 ministers on  25 and 26 February as
part of the drive towards an information society.
 
EUROPA  is  a  pilot  scheme  developed  by  the   Directorate-General  for
Information,  Communication,   Culture  and  Audiovisual  Media  under  the
responsibility of  Marcelino  Oreja,  Member  of  the  Commission,  and  in
cooperation  with the  Computing Centre,  the Spokesman's  Service and  the
information departments of various Directorates-General.
 
The data  available on EUROPA make it  an interesting source of information
for ordinary  Europeans, whether  accessed directly  or indirectly  through
various information relays and networks.
 
The Commission  has already launched other  WWW servers and there  are more
in the  pipeline.  For  example, the  "I'M EUROPE" server  came on  line on
1 September 1994,  at  the  prompting  of  DG  XIII,  for  the  purpose  of
organizing initiatives  on the  information market,  while the  Information
Society Project Office  (ISPO), set up by  the Commission under  its action
programme to  establish an information  society in  Europe, is  responsible
for another  server designed  to support,  promote and  direct private  and
public measures in that field.
 
At its launch EUROPA contained:
 
*   general information  on the European  Union (its  institutions, history
    and questions and answers on topics of general interest);
*   data on  the European Commission  (its tasks, composition,  speeches by
    the President, organizational structure, a document access guide);
*   recent documents from the Spokesman's Service (RAPID);
*   a  directory of  European Union  policies, with  access to  information
    from the Directorates-General aimed at the general public;
*   information on and  access to Commission  databases (I'M EUROPE,  ISPO,
    CORDIS, EUROBASES, EUROSTAT, EUR-OP, etc.).
 
EUROPA's  stock  of  information  will  grow  rapidly.    Its  address  is:
http://www.cec.lu.
 
The Internet has existed  for more  than twenty years.   It was  originally
designed to link up  the computers of the Pentagon's research  centres.  In
the  early  1980s, the  United  States  decided  to  separate the  military
programmes entirely  from the non-military  ones and leave  the Internet to
the  latter, thereby  paving the  way for  an entirely new  network linking
research centres all over the world.
 
The present  explosion in the  number of servers  and users is a  result of
two recent and spectacular  developments.  The first was the concept of the
World Wide  Web, which was developed by a  European researcher at CERN, Tim
Berners-Lee, and led  to the pooling of computing resources, the definition
of the  Universal Resource Locator,  which identifies each  server and user
and makes  them accessible,  and finally  the definition  of the  Hypertext
language.   The  second development  came in  1992  when a  student at  the
University of Illinois,  Marc Andriessen, put  the finishing  touches to  a
software  package that  enables  anyone  with a  computer  and  a modem  to
navigate easily  from one corner  of the planet  to another and to  receive
documents, images and sounds at a modest price.
 
Although most of the users and servers are still in  the United States, the
World Wide Web deserves  its name, as it is spreading throughout the world,
particularly  Europe, at a  phenomenal rate.   In  France, the home  of the
Minitel, Internet traffic is growing by 15% a  month.  In Germany, Denmark,
Sweden, Italy  and Spain each university has  set up its own  server.  Many
other initiatives aimed at informing the public  have sprung up outside the
academic world.   In the United Kingdom  the government is testing  its own
servers,  and local  authorities  in the  Netherlands  are doing  the same.
Meanwhile, we can expect an exponential growth in the number of users.
 
The decision  to launch the  Commission's WWW servers  is clearly warranted
by their userfriendliness, their capacity  to deal with different  forms of
information  and open  up  access to  databases  and, finally,  their great
potential for interactivity.
 
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