On June 25, the European Commission held the European Interoperability Framework (EIF) Info Day in Brussels, where it presented features of the newly updated EIF, which states that only IP-free standards can be used to achieve interoperability in e-Government services.

The EIF is a document that defines the general rules and principles for collaboration on interoperability between member states and EU institutions.

The Commission has narrowed the focus of the EIF making it more favourable to open source software. It even excludes programs such as Bluetooth because they charge a small licensing fee.

The software industry has expressed strong concerns about the European Commission's revised draft EIF and believes that it will hurt small tech start-ups that rely on patent protection to survive.

Jonathan Zuck, president of the Association for Competitive Technology, said the EU scored an own goal with the document. "It aims to facilitate digital cooperation among European administrations, but in effect it excludes many well-established technologies from being used for e-Government services due to a narrow definition of open standards."

The Commission has confirmed that a draft of the updated version of the EIF will be made available for public comment in mid-July. The Commission initiated the EIF revision in August 2006 and asked the Gartner Group to suggest recommendations.

In May 2007 Gartner delivered the final report , which called for the EIF to adopt a pragmatic approach so that it could to promote efficient e-Government services and interoperability across Europe.

Benoît Müller, the director of software policy Europe at the Business Software Alliance was also not impressed by this development.

"The revised EIF is jeopardizing its very objective of promoting interoperability across Europe. By failing to recognize the important and beneficial roles of intellectual property and industry collaboration, the EIF is also in conflict with the Commission's standardization policy," he said.

Zuck added that commercial software must be allowed to compete on a level playing field with other types of software. "Governments ought to buy software on its merits and not through categorical preferences. To demand anything else is to impose one business model over another."