EUROPEAN DIARY.

* EU Telecommunications CouncilEU Telecommunications Ministers will be meeting in Council in Brussels on May 28. Four main points are on the agenda for the meeting: the draft Directive on digital signatures (provisional as the Commission has not yet put forward this proposal); proposal for a Decision on the third-generation Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS), on which a common position is expected; the multiannual Action Plan for promoting safe use of the Internet; and the proposal for a Decision on data exchange between administrations (a common position is expected).* EU Audiovisual CouncilEU Ministers in charge of the Culture and Audiovisual potfolios will be meeting in Brussels on May 28. Five items are on the agenda for the Audiovisual part of the meeting: the draft Recommendation on the protection of minors and human dignity in the provision of audiovisual and information services (Recommendation due to be adopted); adoption of the bilateral Agreement with Cyprus in the audiovisual sector; the outcome of the European Audiovisual Conference held in Birmingham from April 6 to 8; the Green Paper on cultural diversity in audiovisual services (provisional as the Commission has not yet put forward this proposal); the Green Paper on convergence in the telecommunications, media and information technology sectors (debate);* Internal Market CouncilDuring their Council session in Brussels on May 18, EU Ministers in charge of the Internal Market portfolio are expected to adopt a common position on the draft Directive on the legal protection of conditional access services (encrypted services).* Multimedia applications, services and techniquesECAMST 98, the third European conference on multimedia applications, services and techniques will be held from May 26 to 28 in Berlin, Germany. Sponsored by the European Commission in the framework of the ACTS (Advanced Communications Technologies and Services) programme, the objective of ECMAST is to serve as a forum to monitor and anticipate the development of technologies that make distributed multimedia applications possible. The topics to be covered at the conference include the production and creation of multimedia content, coded representation of images, sound and data, multimedia networks and protocols, multimedia delivery on broadcast and telecom networks; servers and storage architecture...