Overall, European ministers are opposed to too much centralisation of competencies in the area of telecommunications. They made this quite clear during the Council meeting in Brussels on Friday 2 December.
In attempt to provide a framework for the debate, the Slovak Presidency had prepared three questions: the choice of connectivity objectives, the means for stepping up coordination between member states as a way of developing 5G and the most urgent measures contained in the telecoms code.
Telecommunications Ministers mainly focused their contributions on a key political point: they are not prepared to hand over their respective competences to Brussels. The British minister said that it should be the market and not the Commission that dictates rules. The Portuguese Minister stated, “Our tools for spectrum harmonisation are already adequate. We should limit ourselves to an exchange of good practice”. The German minister added, “We do not want more centralisation but better coordination through the creation of a high-level group”. Many delegations also reaffirmed their opposition to any strengthening of the national regulators body.
Commissioner Günther Oettinger replied rather curtly to these positions when he remarked, “We want more coordination, not centralisation or harmonisation. Are you satisfied with the transition from 3G to 4G, which took 10 years? I’m not. Coordination between yourselves is your business but up to now it hasn’t been very convincing”. He added that, “all industries are in favour of a single European regulator”. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)