Millennium bug 'needs common approach'

Many different types of electronic goods could be affected

A common international approach to tackle the millennium bug is vital, a meeting of computer experts from across Europe has been told.

UK Trade Minister Barbara Roche told an EU conference in London that it was impossible to tackle the problem in isolation.

"A failure in one part of the EU could have potentially serious knock-on effects elsewhere," she said.

"There is no point in a company in one member state pulling out all the stops to update its own systems if a key overseas supplier or some other critical cross-border link then fails."

The Chairman of the UK Government's Action 2000 initiative, Don Cruickshank, agreed that knowledge and new discoveries had to be shared across international borders.

'Emu exacerbates problem'

Thousands of people are working on fixing the bug

However, the conference, which was set up by the UK as part of its presidency of the EU, has been criticised by independent campaigner Robin Guenier.

He said efforts to deal with the millennium problem were being hampered by work on converting computers to cope with European monetary union (Emu).

Mr Guenier, a former government adviser on the issue, said: "This is a global problem made worse in Europe by the diversion of scarce computing resources to handle the now inevitable introduction of a single currency."

Health and safety first

Mr Cruickshank told the conference that the problems should be tackled in order of importance, without any reference to whether they were caused by the millennium or Emu.

He added that computer programs dealing with health and safety needed to be fixed first, followed by business software. He said less important systems would have to wait.

The project leader of the Dutch equivalent organisation, Millennium Platform, Peter Hagedoorn, agreed.

"We do not advise businesses on priorities between euro and millennium compliance - but to take action where there are risks," he said.

Mr Guenier has warned that the well being of hundreds of millions of people throughout Europe could be seriously threatened unless the millennium problem is dealt with much more urgently.

He has demanded that the so-called "bug tsars" ensure compliance within their own governments, and use their collective power to urge senior company executives across Europe to take charge of their compliance projects.

The British Government decided not to allow the public to attend the London conference to encourage frank discussion of the issues.

The millennium problem will also be on the agenda at a Group of Eight summit in Britain later this month.