Brussels, 25/10/2013 (Agence Europe) - Despite the telecom reforms introduced in 2009, the European market is fragmented and has not made the necessary changes to encourage the digital economy. On 24 October, the European Parliament (EP) adopted a report by Catherine Trautmann (S&D, France) looking at the first telecoms package four years on.
Trautmann says the co-regulation mechanism has improved intra-European regulatory coherence, but a single market has not yet been reached for there is no pan-European operator or services identified as such. She is unhappy that, at the European summit this month, which is supposed to focus on this issue, attention has been reduced to the minimum. The EP wants the European Commission to not focus solely on new measures set out in the telecoms package, but also to prepare to properly review the measures currently in force.
Pointing out that the digital economy is a crucial vector for growth, MEPs say that the 2009 rules, when transposed into national legislation, have not made all the positive changes hoped for. Trautmann says a number of areas merit further study, such as use of radio frequencies, neutrality of the internet and universal service. Some of them are in the Commission's new proposals in what she describes as a more or less satisfactory format, but the idea of including high-speed internet connections in universal service has not been taken on board. Trautmann says the new telecoms package is not joined up, and she would have preferred it to have reflected the findings of a wide consultation exercise among the whole of the sector and for it to provide tools to deal with the lack of investment. What the Commission has come up with, she said, is a number of juxtaposed proposals but without any coherent overview.
Spanish MEP Pilar del Castillo Vera has been asked to examine the Commission's new proposals and submit a report as soon as possible to the EP's ITRE committee on connected Europe. The EP points out that, if the reforms are to be adopted before the end of the current European Parliament, then the report will need to be adopted at the plenary of 14-17 April at the latest. (IL/transl.fl)