LEADER: Ecommerce or bust

The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) launched the UK government's ecommerce paper this week. It's the embodiment of DTI minister Peter Mandleson's vision of an electronic European market with Britain at the helm.

Britain should be the 'digital pathfinder', he said. Mandleson should be applauded for putting ecommerce in the spotlight.

However, while the DTI and the government are strong on rhetoric, they are lacking on concrete policies. And just as worrying is that both parties are only stressing Britain's role in this. Isn't it a bit passé to be banging on about Britain being top of the ecommerce league tables when the spirit of the single European market is about cooperation? More particularly, it's about interoperability, which is essential for integrating several nations into one digital economy.

In the words of one industry observer: "Playing 'who's the greatest' doesn't represent the UK as a country that wants to embrace the European market whole-heartedly."

In fact, it harks back to less Euro-friendly times when Baroness Thatcher embarrassingly demanded 'her' money back from the European budget.

In her speech at the UK Technology Week - a nationwide series of conferences and seminars - minister for small businesses Barbara Roche reeled off a series of statistics suggesting that Britain is already forging ahead of the European race to embrace ecommerce. Apparently, more UK businesses are using email than their German or French counterparts. What's more, we "lead in the use of EDI and videoconferencing" when it comes to "facility and frequency of use", she said.

Businesses and citizens don't need this competitive, 'little England' attitude. Ministers need to realise that European ecommerce adoption is about creating common technology standards, so that public and private infrastructures can communicate across boarders.

The DTI's attitude is Euro-unfriendly and lacking in specific policies. It could even be a spanner in the works of the UK's smooth integration into European ecommerce.