57. Recalls that the future competitiveness of Europe and its capacity to recover from the current economic crisis largely depend on its ability to facilitate the general and effective deployment of ICT in undertakings; notes, however, that SMEs are still lagging far behind large undertakings and draws special attention to the guarantees which micro and small undertakings should be given to ensure that they are not deprived of the benefits of the development of ICTs; calls on Member States and the Commission to step up support for SMEs as regards the use o ...[+++]f ICT tools to increase their productivity;

60. Believes that response and monitoring tools developed at EU level, respectively the network of standby EMSA oil recovery vessels and CleanSeaNet (CSN) oil-spill monitoring and detection, can be used for incidents/accidents with offshore installations;

At a minimum, the reference offer should contain the relevant procedures and tools for retrieving civil engineering asset information; describe the access and usage conditions to the different elements which make up the civil engineering infrastructure; describe the procedures and tools for access ordering, provisioning and fault management; and fix target service levels and the penalties for breach of those service levels.

At a minimum, the reference offer should contain the relevant procedures and tools for retrieving civil engineering asset information; describe the access and usage conditions to the different elements which make up the civil engineering infrastructure; describe the procedures and tools for access ordering, provisioning and fault management; and fix target service levels and the penalties for breach of those service levels.

The objective is to provide the industrial systems of the future with the necessary tools for efficient life-cycle design, production, use and recovery as well as appropriate organisational models and improved knowledge management.

(18) Information society services span a wide range of economic activities which take place on-line; these activities can, in particular, consist of selling goods on-line; activities such as the delivery of goods as such or the provision of services off-line are not covered; information society services are not solely restricted to services giving rise to on-line contracting but also, in so far as they represent an economic activity, extend to services which are not remunerated by those who receive them, such as those offering on-line information or commercial communications, or those providing tools allowing for search, access and retrieval of data; information society services also include services consisting of the transmission of in ...[+++]formation via a communication network, in providing access to a communication network or in hosting information provided by a recipient of the service; television broadcasting within the meaning of Directive EEC/89/552 and radio broadcasting are not information society services because they are not provided at individual request; by contrast, services which are transmitted point to point, such as video-on-demand or the provision of commercial communications by electronic mail are information society services; the use of electronic mail or equivalent individual communications for instance by natural persons acting outside their trade, business or profession including their use for the conclusion of contracts between such persons is not an information society service; the contractual relationship between an employee and his employer is not an information society service; activities which by their very nature cannot be carried out at a distance and by electronic means, such as the statutory auditing of company accounts or medical advice requiring the physical examination of a patient are not information society services.