WINNERS OF THE EUROPEAN YOUTH AWARD 2016

These are the category winners chosen by the Grand Jury in Cyprus in September 2016. The Grand Jury event was kindly hosted by The Republic of Cyprus and the Digital Champion Cyprus  and facilitated by by the Uclan Cyprus university. The event was supported by CYTA, MTN, European Commission, CITEA, Cablenet and PrimeTel as well as by the Council of Europe.


Category: Healthy Life: (fitness | nutrition | healthcare | med tech)
Winning projects:  Be My Eyes | DayCape | Mira 

Category: Smart Learning (education | e-skills | open science | infotainment)

Winning projects: Animal Hero Universe | Unimersiv 

Connecting Cultures: (language | travelling | diversity | new communities)
Winning projects: VEASYT Live! 

Category: Go Green(sustainable energy | mobility | smart cities | climate change)
Winning projects: HAIZE | Fresh.land 

Category: Active Citizenship (citizen journalism | social cohesion | human rights | (wo)men empowerment)
Winning projects: FreeCom | AdoptGrandFather.org 

Category: Money Matters (financial literacy | employment | fundraising | fin tech)
Winning projects: Poslonaut/HireApp 

Special Category: migration | integration | inclusion | refugee movement
Winner: to be announced on October 19, 2016 

Special category: know-center_knowawardKnow Award
Winner: to be announced on October 19, 2016

More information on the winning EYA projects and the EYA Festival Graz, go to:
http://eu-youthaward.org/winning-projects-2016/

BPN 1358 Dead media publishers want assistance

A number of European publishers of newspapers and magazines have requested the European Commission for stricter copyright laws in order to develop an online earning model. The publishers say that re-use of material by websites and news aggregators undermines a business model for internet. And as advertisements are decreasing, publishers look for methods to earn on content. the 'Hamburg Declaration' was introduced on 8 June and has so far been adopted by 149 German publishers.



In Germany it has been suggested to have neighbouring rights for textual content, like for the re-use of songs. The publishers want to have a stricter regime on copyright legislation. They work on the technical system ACAP (Automated Content Access Protocol) with which they want to force news aggregators to use this protocol.

This is just one of the signals that European publishers are having problems to survive. With an annually decreasing number of subscribers and the revenue decrease of ads in this economic recession, the revenues of the publishers are getting lower year by year. In the meantime they do not compensate the decrease with income from internet.

The problem is of course not limited to Europe only. Also in the States newspapers and magazines publishers feel the decrease and have no compensation from internet. As I recently wrote, only newspapers in India seem to be able to expand as more people start reading and are offered newspapers in more local languages.

In the meantime publishers complain and look for subsidies, grants and extra charges, saying that the newspaper scene should remain pluriform. This is strange by asking subsidies and grants, they become dependent of the government and not free to comment.

Recently a former Dutch minister, mr Brinkman, presented a report on the Dutch newspaper market. The report contains a series of obligatory phrases about the freedom of journalism and then constitutes that the revenues of the newspaper publishers are going down in such a fast way that they need to be assisted financially. Like in a magic show the commission chairman conjures up a white bunny: every internet user should pay a surcharge for the newspaper industry.

You can imagine the reactions to this proposal: an internet levy for dead media. At once the whole report, which was well documented and provided with sharp analyses, was forgotten. Intellectuals turned up their nose, while others started to express curses and abuse. And of course, the Dutch publishers have the same global problems and their own problems. They have never invested in innovation, except for the metal of their presses. When internet came around the publishers did not really experiment with for example an own national aggregator service; they left it to others. They increasingly started to depend on news wire services, having for 60 percent the same news items as other print papers and internet services. Regional newspapers have become less local and have not concentrated on social networks. Glossy weekly magazines were set up for 10 million euro in a time that the money should have used as internet green shoot. Internet services for ad acquisition were set up by new players like Google. And when the editorial and advertisement staffs set up experiments and networks, they were called back by board members, saying that internet was like teletext and not a serious medium. They spilled a lot of money by partnering hedge funds and buying rights to movie libraries. And now people that use internet should be paying a surcharge for lack of initiative on the part of publishers.

Should a surcharge be set on the use of internet. Of course not; that is really ridiculous. Should publishers get assistance in order to turn around their business. Not really. They should only get funds matching their own project money and only after that projects have been evaluated for innovation by internet and content experts. There are enough ideas to be incorporated by newspapers companies: cross media, social networks, not customised , but personal mobile services and crime maps, for example. Oh, and recommending eReaders as an innovation will not save the forests and newspaper world. Publishers should start seriously confront themselves with the digital future and phase out their print products over the next five years: the year 2015 should be the year print went out of fashion for newspapers.

Blog Posting Number: 1358

Tags: newspaper

EC: 1 million sentences in 22 languages

The European Commission’s collection of about 1 million sentences and their high quality translations in 22 of the 23 official EU languages — including those of the new Member States — is the biggest ever collection in so many languages and is now freely available. The data can help the development of other linguistic software tools such as grammar and spell checkers, online dictionaries and multilingual text classification systems. By offering free and open access to this JRC-Acquis collection of sentences, the EU hopes to foster multilingualism.

The EU institutions have more multilingual texts than any other organisation in the world because of the requirements that EU law exist in each of its 23 official languages. Their translation services work with 253 possible language pair combinations and produce around 1.5 million translated pages a year.

Whereas large amounts of translations of English or French texts can be found on the Internet, such resources are scarce for languages such as Latvian, Romanian or Dutch, and they are practically nonexistent for the combination of two languages for which few resources exist.

Through co-operation between its translators and its in-house scientists, The EC is releasing large collections of sentences from legal documents covering technical, political and social issues which are available in 22 languages (Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, German, Greek, Finnish, French, Hungarian, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovene, Spanish and Swedish). In this translation repository it is possible to find sentences with their equivalent in all other official languages . Only Irish translations are not yet available. This release of language data is a good example of the Commission's open policy of re-use of its information resources and follows the opening of the EU's documentary and terminological databases Eur-Lex and IATE.

The EC has extensive experience with the development of multilingual text processing tools and is at the forefront of multilingualism, offering publicly accessible news search sites covering up to 35 languages via its European Media Monitoring tool. The 7th Framework programme for research and development – in its Information and Communication Technologies strand – supports research on machine translation and other language related technologies.

Blog Posting Number: 985

Tags: machine translation, multilingualism

2008: Year of the fibre breakthrough

Amsterdam got its Christmas present from the European Commission. The municipality of Amsterdam was cleared from unfair state competition in the matter of the fibre project of the Cityring from the complainants the cable operator UPC and cable operators’ association VECAI (which changed its name to NLkabel recently). Amsterdam had never doubted the positive outcome of the EC investigation.


(c) 2007; Houthoff Buruma Solicitors

The Directorate General of Competition, headed by Ms Neelie Kroes, decided to start an investigation, acting on the complaints of UPC and VECAI. The municipality of Amsterdam had invested 6 million euro as equity with private companies in the passive level the proposed Cityring. Amsterdam did the investment in order keep control on an open fibre network. UPC have been closed out of the bidding process early, lodge a complaint of unfair state funding with the DG Competition. The DG started a voluntary and non obligatory investigation. A lot of documents went back and forth, confidential documents had to be cleaned up due to corporate details and draft documents were held up due to court cases. Even a case before the Court in Luxemburg was under consideration. In May the DG Competition was ready to start the final leg of the investigation, which ended in December with a ruling favourable for the municipality of Amsterdam.

The DG Competition looked at three items:
a. does the municipality act as a market conform investor, in other words does the municipality not support the foundation of a company unfairly with state support;
b. Is fibre to the home a achievable business case;
c. And some specific sub-items.

Already in December 2006 UPC and VECAI had the draft text, clearing the municipality of unfair support. UPC decently kept its mouth shut as the investigation was not yet final. Remained left the business case and the specific sub-items. Helped by the timeframe, the business case was not an item any longer either. In the Netherlands FttH initiatives mushroomed: Nuenen, Hillegom, Geldrop-Mierlo, Deventer, Enschede as well as abroad. Besides the projects various companies competed for these projects; in the Netherlands notably Reggeborgh and KPN. Last October, the Amsterdam municipal project manager Dirk van der Woude has published an updated list on Dutch and foreign FttH projects. The last sub-items have been cleared by the municipality of Amsterdam successfully.

So Amsterdam can continue its project to bring fibre to more than 450.000 Amsterdam homes. In the meantime more initiatives spring up, besides the already mentioned one. As ambitious as the Amsterdam Cityring is the living lab Almere project where 70.000 will be connected to fibre before 2010.

From the updated list it is clear that 2008 will be the year of the fibre breakthrough in The Netherlands. Not in the list is yet the Fibre to the Farm (FttF) project, a project where rural areas will be linked up to urban networks. Difficult areas will be bridged by leading cables through trees in woody areas; besides farmers will dig the ducts with tractors instead of calling in a cable laying contractor with urban experience. Also internationally fibre will break through with large urban areas in 2008. Fibre will no longer be in a pilot phase, but will be in a project phase.

Cable projects will have to prove in 2008 that they can reach the same type of speeds by cable. So far UPC has demonstrated speeds of up to 100Mbps, but has not started marketing it. It looks like UPC and other cable operators will have to stick to lower rates over against fibre operators. I look forward to the battlefield in Almere.

The usage of higher speeds will have consequences for content. We have seen the usage of video grow fast. Also the social networks have grown with movies and twitter-like services. But with higher speeds, services will have more freedom to compose services with live video. This will for example be a challenge for newspapers and broadcast services. But it will also have consequences for bloggers. So far the majority of bloggers have worked with text. But I would not be surprised, when we see more bloggers go into audio or video interview blogs.

Blog Posting Number: 964

Tags: FttH, FttF, Fibre to the Home, Fibre to the Farm, Fibre to the Home, Fibre to the Farm, FttH, FttF

EU Tube – Europe on YouTube

The European Commission has launched a dedicated channel on YouTube to make its audiovisual material more widely available to the public. 'EU Tube' – the Commission's new channel on YouTube was launched on 29 June. The non-exclusive arrangement between the European Commission and YouTube aims to present new and innovative ways of informing people on the activities of the European Union through video clips that illustrate the main issues facing citizens from across the 27 member states.

"This initiative reflects the Commission's commitment to better explain its policies and actions on issues which concern citizens across the EU – such as climate change, energy or immigration" said Margot Wallström, Vice-President for Institutional Relations and Communication Strategy.

Currently, users can watch approximately 50 video clips on a wide-range of topics - from the EU's first post-war historical steps to today's need to safeguard the environment and combat climate change.

To begin with, much of the content is in English, but French and German language clips are also being added. Other languages will be added wherever possible.

"It is very important for the Commission to use all the means at its disposal when it comes to communicating with European citizens. We can not ignore the developments which have taken place on the internet in the past few years, in particular the popularity of video sharing sites such as YouTube", said Margot Wallström

Discover what's on EU Tube.

Blog Posting Number: 800

Tgas: video, european union

Hello Brussels

Yesterday I left for Brussels in Belgium, the unofficial capital of the European Union. I will be here for two week on assignment for the European Commission.

It is a funny day to travel to Belgium as the county is having elections today. It looks like the present coalition is going to be voted away. Belgium is finished with the purple cabinet of socialists and Christians. In Belgium citizens are still obliged to go and vote. Those not going without a valid excuses risk a fine. This sounds like a package of measures from last century. But with a complex country like Belgium with a federative political and multi-lingual structure, I guess that you need such an obligation.

I named Brussels the unofficial capital of the European Union. Sometimes the French city of Strassbourg would like to claim that position also as it is the alternative seat to Brussels for the European Parliament. It is just an expensive way to keep France happy, but it requires 200 million euro annually for all the politicians and their staff to move back and forth between Brussels and Strassbourg. This money spilling exercise should be abolished.

I will not analyse the European politics about the constitution. In 2005 France and The Netherlands voted against a full European constitution with flag and hymn. It was a clear signal that the European Union is not nor should be a supra-national body. Besides it was a signal to tell that the European expansion was going to fast. The Union went from 15 countries to a union of 25 countries with other countries like Turkey waiting in the wings. It looks like the chiefs have received the signal and have started to draft a new minimalist treaty, which will not upset citizens.

I have taken my PC along and hope to be able to keep up the blog from my hotel room. Not this time. The hotel near the Stockmarket Exchange does not have wifi nor did the receptionist know anything about it. When the word internet fell I was referred to a phone company with phone and internet boxes. The guy behind the counter had never heard of wifi. Happily enough a guy, who just came into shop, understood my problem and told me to go the Irish pub on the corner of the Stock Exchange square, the Belgian version of Wall Street. And indeed the Irish pub O’Reilly has a wireless network. So with a beer close to my computer I will keep up blog.

Blog Posting Number: 780

Tags: Belgium, wifi