British Science and Technology Minister Mr Ian Taylor tried again yesterday to get his European Union partners to pay more attention to a computer programming problem that could wreak havoc at the turn of the century.

Dubbed the "millennium bug", the threat results from the fact that computer systems use a two-digit format to show the year - making 1997, for example, simply 97. At the turn of the century, many will interpret 00 as 1900 rather than 2000.

Mr Taylor told a meeting of EU telecommunications ministers that European companies were still not aware enough of the problem - the third time he has raised the issue with them.

"If a substantial number of companies in Europe fail to modify their computer systems to deal with the Century Date Change, we could rapidly see a breakdown in many of the normal communications between companies," he said in a letter to EU Telecoms Commissioner Mr Martin Bangemann before the meeting.