Exchange of experience in the use of open standards and open source amongst administrations should be promoted amongst others through the relevant EU programmes.

(30) It is the objective of the members of the X/Open Group to establish a standard interface to a particular version of Unix.

4) The Council reached agreement on the work programme in the field of ONP for the next years. In particular, this programme provides that : there will be specific ONP Directives for leased lines and voice telephony; by 1 January 1991, technical interfaces and services features concerning packet-switched data transmission and the ISDN will be established and could be made mandatory according to the procedure mentioned above; ONP conditions will be adopted in the form of recommendations by 1 July 1991 and 1 January 1992 for packet-switched data transmission and the ISDN respectively; -2- the Council will examine Commisson proposals in ...[+++]1992 and thereafter by which the recommendations mentioned above would be transposed into directives. THE SERVICES DIRECTIVE On 28 June 1989, the Commission had adopted a first draft of the Services Directive on the basis of Article 90(3) of the Treaty. However, the Commission postponed its entry into force so that the Council of Ministers would have sufficient time to adopt the Directive on Open Network Provision (the ONP Directive). Thus, the Commission wished to see the Services Directive entering into force on the same day as the ONP Directive. The basic concept of the Services Directive is as follows : The exclusive or special rights of the PTTs in the field of telecommunications services have to be abolished, with the exception of voice telephony and the network infrastructure.

Fresh ties can therefore be expected, or old ones could be strenghtened, between ; - the Commission of the European Communities and the Na- tional Bureau of Standards, under the US Department of Commerce; - CEN/CENELEC, the ECPT and the American National Standards Institute, BELL Communications Research Inc (BELLCORE) and the Exchange Carriers Standards Association (ECSA); - European testing and type-approval laboratories and the Corporations for Open Systems (COS) in the USA.

Fresh ties can therefore be expected, or old ones could be strenghtened, between ; - the Commission of the European Communities and the Na- tional Bureau of Standards, under the US Department of Commerce; - CEN/CENELEC, the ECPT and the American National Standards Institute, BELL Communications Research Inc (BELLCORE) and the Exchange Carriers Standards Association (ECSA); - European testing and type-approval laboratories and the Corporations for Open Systems (COS) in the USA.

It also stressed the importance of conditional access systems based on standards that ensure fair and open competition, in the interests of service providers and viewers.