The European Commission found it hard to hide its delight on Friday 2 March after a number of inter-institutional agreements on the e-communications code of conduct. The co-legislators managed to reach provisional agreement on a number of key questions but still have work to do before they can wrap up the code of conduct.
The draft directive rehashes in 283 pages a framework directive of 2002, a directive on authorisation, a directive on access and a directive on universal service (see EUROPE 11624).
At this stage, five trialogue meetings have been organised on the proposal that was unveiled in September 2016; the fourth, with a representative of Parliament’s internal market committee (IMCO), took place on 28 February, and the fifth, with representatives of Parliament’s industry committee (ITRE), took place on 1 March.
It was at the last meeting that most progress was made since the co-legislators managed to conclude the section on the spectrum (including the tricky question of the duration of licences).
‘Spectrum’ aspects in detail
In a press release, the European Commission announces twenty years of investment predictability for spectrum licences.
We understand that the Council agreed to introduce a minimum duration for the acquisition of the right to use the spectrum (Article 49). The provisional compromise talked about a period of predictability for investment of 20 years in the form of 15 years and an extra period. To respond to member states’ fears, it allows them to introduce derogations for limited geographical areas for small, short-duration projects or for experiments. It adds the option of changing the conditions attached to user rights.
For other issues still hanging on the spectrum, the provisional agreement endorses the peer-assessment system unveiled by the Commission (Article 35) to follow national decisions on allocation of the spectrum as long as they are voluntary. It no longer includes the two-thirds condition proposed by the Bulgarian Presidency of the Council for use of said system (see EUROPE 11966).
When it comes to the coordinated timeline for assigning deployment of 5G (Article 53a), it takes up the Czech proposal forcing member states to free up at least 1 GHz of the 24.25-27.5 GHz frequency by 2020 as long as there is a clear indication of market demand and no major constraints on migration of existing users or release of said frequency (see EUROPE 11968).
Several questions need to be settled
The day before, the inter-institutional meeting of representatives of the Council, the European Commission and Parliament’s IMCO committee made progress on the compensation mechanism in the event of abuse or delays in changing operators (Article 99, paragraph 6a).
Otherwise, a number of questions remain to be settled, such as the measures demanded by the European Parliament on a reverse emergency number (112), and abolition of extra costs for intra-EU calls. It was decided that work should continue on both these issues at a technical committee.
The next trialogue will take place on 20 March (with representatives of the IMCO and ITRE committees) and a final meeting is scheduled for April, which people think might last two days in order to be certain of reaching agreement under the Bulgarian Presidency. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)