Inter-institutional negotiations can now officially begin on what costs to apply to the wholesale roaming markets. Following on from the European Parliament a few days ago, the Council of the EU managed to reach a position, after much deliberation, on the draft regulation on Friday 2 December. 13 delegations think that the caps have been set “too high”.
It should be pointed out that Regulation 2015/2120 aims to get rid of the surcharges invoiced by telephone operators during visits to other member states as from June 2017 (retail roaming). The Council has also called on the Commission to introduce tariff caps on prices that the operators apply between themselves when customers use their networks while travelling within the EU (wholesale roaming) (see EUROPE 11573).
The subject that has become a catalyst for most of the opposition at the Parliament and Council involves the question of data exchange. Overall, the countries subject to periodic pressures, such as that experienced in countries with high numbers of tourists, would like relatively high caps to compensate for their investments, whilst the others are calling for quite low caps.
On Friday, European Ministers for Telecommunications reached a political agreement of principle (general approach), which seeks to reduce the maximum price of €10 per gigabyte in the middle of 2017 to €5 per gigabyte in the middle of 2021(EUROPE 11655).
During the debates, 13 member states, however, said that they believe that the caps had been set too high. The Danish delegation explained, “We need caps that are lower than those proposed by the Commission or contained in the compromise…This creates a risk of increasing prices for retail or pushing certain operators towards no longer providing roaming services”. Denmark is behind a written declaration in this sense co-signed by 12 other countries (Austria, Belgium, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovenia and Sweden). During the vote, Finland opposed the text, whilst Poland abstained. Portugal, Cyprus and Germany, however, appealed for them to remain close to the general approach during the negotiations with Parliament.
It should be pointed out that Parliament supports gigabyte caps that are lower than those argued for by the Commission and Council, namely, €4 for messages sent in 2017, €3 in 2018, €2 in 2019 and €1 in 2020 (see EUROPE 11678). (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)