Michael Geist, a Canadian legal expert on internet law, writes about international pressure to make publicly funded research openly accessible in this Toronto Star article from Feb 27 2007:

Last month, five leading European research institutions launched a petition that called on the European Commission to establish a new policy to require that all government-funded research be made available to the public shortly after publication.

That requirement – called an open access principle – would leverage widespread Internet connectivity with low-cost electronic publication to create a freely available virtual scientific library available to the entire globe.

Despite scant media attention, word of the petition spread quickly throughout the scientific and research communities. Within weeks, it garnered more than 20,000 signatures, including several Nobel prize winners and more than 750 education, research, and cultural organizations from around the world.

In response, the European Commission committed over $100 million toward facilitating greater open access through support for open access journals and for the building of the infrastructure needed to house institutional repositories that can store the millions of academic articles written each year.

Giest goes on to say that, "Canadian funding agencies are increasingly at risk of falling behind their counterparts around the world by dragging their heels on the open access front. ...The failure to lead on this issue could have long-term negative consequences for Canadian research."