The International Telecommunications Union working group (ITU WG) met in Copenhagen on 24-25 April. This first encounter since the Plenipotentiary Conference (PP02) was overseen by its new chairperson, from the Swiss administration.
The meeting was called with the specific aim of preparing for the ITU Council to be held in Geneva on 5-16 May, and specifically the most controversial agenda items. A co-ordinated European position must be worked out for them, due to their importance not only from the standpoint of European interests, but also vis-à-vis the broader relationship with the other ITU countries.
Given that this is a very special phase in the ITU?s life, because of the PP02 decisions, the diagnosis of the Union?s management made there and in the context of the financial limits, the meeting paid close attention to the draft budget for the 2004/2005 biennium and other related issues of a financial nature.
All the countries present highlighted the need for more ITU clarification in the process of drawing up and submitting the budget.
The analysis led the Council to decide to approve the proposal to push back approval of the budget to an extraordinary session to be held in the second half of 2003. By that time the budget should be modified in light of the new principles of clarification and transparency, namely stemming from recommendations of the Experts Group charged with reviewing the ITU?s management; Portugal is a member of same as representative of region B western Europe).
The meeting also considered other issues such as the next World Radiocommunications Conference (WRC03), the World Summit for the Information Society (WSIS) and the World Telecommunications Standardisation Assembly (WTSA04). It decided to set up a WSIS task force and a project team (PT) to prepare for the WTSA, to be chaired by France.
