Les PDG appellent les gouvernements à encourager l'innovation dans les TIC[en] 

Some 45% of GNP in  the EU goes to administrations, but they make up for only 20% of the ICT market, spending as little as 12 of their budget on ICT, according to participants at an EBS workshop on 15 March 2007. Across the board, managers of VISA Europe, Ericsson, Hutchinson and Alcatel stressed the important role played by governments and the EU in creating the right environment for technology-oriented businesses to grow. 

The foremost task for governments, Michael Treschow said, is to provide the right infrastructure for ICT to thrive; Treschow is chairman of  Ericsson and president of the  Confederation of Swedish Enterprise . He added that the driving force behind his company's success was the provision of an advanced infrastructure at an early date and effective tendering at a national level. He predicted that infrastructure especially will be a prerequisite for future success: "The future belongs to broadband, wherever you are and at any time. The better we can enable this, the more positively it will affect our societies."

Hutchinson Whampoa  Deputy Chairman Christian Salbaing pointed out the great success of mobile telephony in Europe, with its 100% penetration rate, as compared with the US, where there are only 60 mobile phones per 100 inhabitants. He said that this success was due mainly to the GSM standard, which in the meantime has also become a leading measure in the US, around level with the local CDMA standard. Salbaing stressed the importance of technology-neutral regulatory approaches for third-generation mobile telephony, naming the UK as a positive example, whereas, he said, countries such as France and Italy were unduly favouring the UMTS standard. He cited, however, mobile roaming as an example of an issue "where regulation is necessary because markets don't work properly". 

Fabio Colasanti, director-general of  DG Information Society and often named as the father of the Commission's draft roaming regulation , agreed. Colasanti briefly outlined the history of the Commission's information society programmes since 2000 and deployed the still relatively poor use of ICT, particularly by small- and medium-sized companies "in many sectors where you would expect ICT to do more". 

"Consistency, stability and certainty are regulatory conditions needed for investment,"  Visa Europe Deputy Chief Executive Philippe Menier pointed out, naming the Single European Payments Area as one project that could provide these conditions for the market for online payments. Menier called on regulators to "acknowledge payments as a commercial model within SEPA".