LONDON — Craig Barrett criticized the French government and repeated warnings made by Andrew Grove, his predecessor as president and chief executive of Intel Corp., in an address to a European audience this week.

With several hundred business executives in attendance, Barrett said the French government may be damaging European competitiveness in electronic commerce by opposing the use of strong encryption technology.

"Security and encryption are a necessity for e-business," he said. "The French government has taken an attitude that it is illegal to use strong encryption. So we can't do e-business in France." Strong encryption is generally taken to be encryption technology, which uses 128-bit keys.

Barrett urged European governments not to follow France's lead in placing restrictions on the use and supply of encryption products. "French restrictions deter companies from outside France with engaging in e-commerce activities with France, and potentially damage the competitiveness of Europe," he said.

Having started an e-business pilot operation in July, Intel expected to do $4 billion of sales via e-business in 1998, Barrett said.

Barrett met on Monday with Martin Bangemann, the European Union's commissioner for information and telecommunications technologies, and presented him with a list of concerns about European technology adoption.

Aside from encryption, Barrett cited the need to improve the teaching and scope of IT at universities and business schools, the need for governments to remove tax barriers to encourage PC purchase initiatives, and the need to make broadband communications cheaper and more available to enable the growth of the PC industry.

During his hour-long address in London, Barrett quoted figures showing that U.S. telecommunications costs are, on average, five times lower than in Europe. Barrett said he got a "very positive response" from Bangemann. "I think the only people I won't get a positive response from is the telecommunications companies," he said.

The executive also addressed the use of information technology in Western Europe. "The good news is that Europe is showing the highest growth rate at the moment," Barrett said. "The bad news is you still have only half the penetration [of PCs] into businesses and homes.

"You've made a positive response to Andy [Grove]'s comments [of Feb. '97] but you're still not quite there. In the U.S. 40 percent of homes have PCs and 70 percent of homes with children have PCs." Many European educational establishments have been slow to adopt the PC.

Showing a desire to put its financial resources towards correcting this last point, Barrett launched an educational initiative between Intel and Oxford University during his U.K. visit. The project aims to improve the educational content available for multimedia PCs and to address information technology skill shortages among teachers. Intel has funded research at Oxford University and a small number of local companies to develop multimedia-rich, highly interactive applications for the classroom.