Inter-institutional negotiations can now officially begin on the question of costs applied to the roaming wholesale markets. The European Parliament's Industry Committee has gave a mandate to the rapporteur, Miapetra Kumpula-Natri (S&D, Finland), on Tuesday 29 November. The first meeting is planned for 14 December 2016.
It should be pointed out that Regulation 2015/2120 seeks to put an end to surcharges invoiced by telephone operators during visits to other member states as from June 2016 (retail roaming). It has also called on the Commission to introduce tariff caps on the prices operators apply between themselves when their networks are used by customers travelling in the EU (wholesale roaming).
During their meeting on 29 November, MEPs at the ITRE Committee supported the Commission proposal to limit wholesale message prices sent from one member state in the EU to another to €0.01.
For wholesale voice calls they also opted for € 0.04 per minute instead of € 0.03 as proposed by the Commission.
The most important point in this report, however, incontestably involves the wholesale price of roaming data services: MEPs decided to apply safeguard caps lower than those called for by the Commission and the Council. They propose that this cap be gradually reduced over the next few years. It will therefore be set at €4 per gigabyte of data transmitted in 2017; €3/gigabyte in 2018; €2/gigabyte in 2019 and €1/gigabyte between 2020 and 2022 to less. The Commission proposed a tariff set at € 8.5/gigabyte, while the Council, which also adopted a gradual approach, suggested a starting rate of €10.5/gigabyte. During a press conference before the votes, the rapporteur, Miapetra Kumpula-Natri explained, “Currently, only Maltese operators pay more than €4/Gigabyte for wholesale roaming services”. The MEP therefore pointed out that they could look at “specific provisions for Malta”. She also highlighted the major differences that currently existed between member states where a €30 sim card in Finland would allow for unlimited data exchanges but barely 0.5 gigabyte in Portugal.
The legislative resolution also calls on the Commission to publish an interim report on implementation of the regulation before 15 December 2018, as well as a progress report based on a legislative proposal, if needs be, every two years as from 15 December 2019.
The inter-institutional trilogues are expected to begin on 14 December and could come to an end by February 2017, in view of respecting the 15 June 2017 deadline set out in Regulation 2015/2120. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)