Europeans Seek Quotas to Blunt U.S. Dominance of Cyberspace : Culture: The EU, led by France, will make software imports an issue of the Group of Seven session.

BRUSSELS — Europeans, already worried that American movies and TV will disrupt their culture, have found a new cause for concern: American dominance in cyberspace.

With computers, telecommunications and television expected to converge in the industry of the future, the European Union is girding for an uphill battle for the crucial software and multimedia market.

The world’s seven biggest industrial powers will meet this weekend to discuss the information society. The session could be the next round in Europe’s fight to entrench itself in the data stream and keep American industrial might from turning into cultural domination.

France, which has led recent efforts to limit European imports of American movies and TV shows, is expected to push the issue vehemently at the Group of Seven meeting in Brussels. Vice President Al Gore will attend, as will officials from Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Canada and Japan.

EU Research and Development Commissioner Edith Cresson, a former French prime minister, said the 15-nation EU “is as culturally and industrially threatened by education and training software of Nintendo and Microsoft as it is by U.S. television series.”

Jan Lamers, publisher of the Belgian business paper FET, warned current trends will lead to “a bland Euro-sausage, with the recipe being written in America.”

Once the infrastructure of telecommunications lines and satellites is up and running, software with features such as video on demand is expected to be the growth sector.

“We forget the true battleground in the future will be programs, and we are far too badly prepared for that,” said Karel Van Miert, EU commissioner of competition.

“In the next century we risk the wholesale globalization of culture,” John Birt, director general of the British Broadcasting Corp., said Monday. “By and large, this will mean an Americanized world culture.”

French Culture Minister Jacques Toubon, already has visions of “colonization”--European culture taken to the United States as a raw material and sold back to Europe as finished product.

So, talk of barriers has surfaced again.

For five years, France and the EU have been at odds with the United States over quotas for American television shows in Europe, a fight which almost derailed the GATT world trade agreement in 1993.

The EU is still considering extending the quota system.