BRUSSELS, Oct. 19 (Xinhua) -- The European Union (EU) leaders on Thursday called for accelerating regulatory work to complete the Digital Single Market strategy by the end of 2018.
Despite considerable progress, work on a future-oriented regulatory framework needs to be accelerated in order to meet this deadline, the EU leaders said during their two-day summit in Brussels.
To that end, the additional Telecom Council on Oct. 24 should discuss how to speed up and prioritize the work on the Digital Single Market, they said.
Agreement between the co-legislators on geo-blocking, audio-visual media services and parcel delivery should be reached by the end of 2017, they noted.
The leaders said co-legislators should also agree on the free flow of non-personal data proposal and the electronic communications code by June 2018.
They also called for cooperation at the EU level to achieve "world-class very high-speed fixed and mobile networks (5G) all across the EU and increased coordinated availabilities of spectrum by 2020".
The Digital Single Market strategy, adopted by the EU on May 6, 2015, aims to tear down regulatory walls and move from 28 national markets to a single one. This could contribute 415 billion euros (491.7 billion U.S. dollars) to the economy and create hundreds of thousands of new jobs.
The European Commission has put forward 43 initiatives to complete the market, among them 24 legislative proposals. However, only six of the legislative proposals have been adopted.
The EU summit kicked off in Brussels on Thursday, with migration, digital single market, defense and Brexit issues top of the agenda.
