EU plans millennium bug monitoring centre

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Tuesday December 21, 12:21 pm Eastern Time

EU exective plans millennium bug monitoring centre

BRUSSELS, Dec 21 (Reuters) - The European Commission said on Tuesday it would have experts in nuclear safety, financial markets and telecommunications working over the New Year to monitor any computer- related problems in the European Union arising from the millennium date change.

``This centre will form part of a greater pan-European network monitoring the Y2K situation around the year end,'' Commission spokesman Per Haugaard told the EU executive's daily news briefing.

A handful of officials with expertise in sensitive sectors would staff the centre continuously from 10 a.m. (0900 GMT) on December 31 to 3 a.m. (0200 GMT) on January 5, he said.

With many businesses not planning to open until January 4 to make sure they can cope with any problems, the centre would stay open until close of business on the U.S. West coast that day.

The centre would be an ``early warning point'' for handling potentially critical situations and also allow existing channels of cooperation to be activated in situations where any EU-wide responses were needed.

Haugaard said the centre did not plan to issue regular public information during the New Year period. That was the job of national monitoring centres in the EU, he said.

He noted most EU members planned to provide information via the World Bank-funded international Y2K centre in Washington DC (www.iy2kcc.org).

Haugaard said, however, the EU centre would publish one summary report on its own website (www.ispo.cec.be/y2keuro/year2000.htm) on January 3.

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-- Linkmeister (link@librarian.edu), December 21, 1999.


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