Digital EU Integration and the Lisbon Process.

The European Commission has opened up telecommunications markets in 1998 for several reasons where fear of losing international competitiveness in information and communication technology - considered as crucial for economic growth of the EU - was one major aspect. Another reason was the idea that with digitization and modernization of the telecommunications sector the EU would become a digitally integrated market system with a much more productive use and storage of information and knowledge. The EU countries were largely considered as high wage countries which should specialize more on knowledge intensive and technology intensive products. As globalization increased competitive pressure in labour-intensive production it seemed adequate that member countries of the EU should specialize increasingly on knowledge-intensive and capital-intensive goods and services. The services sector could be expected to expand strongly once that digital outsourcing of services in general and telecommunications services in particular would be cheaper and better. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]