On Wednesday 24 February, the European Commission proposed to extend the abolition of roaming charges between EU countries for another 10 years, a measure that has been in force since June 2017, but is due to end on 30 June 2022.
“The current regulation will expire next year. Our proposal will allow travellers in the European Union to continue to make calls, send text messages and use data at no extra cost”, explained Vice-President Frans Timmermans to the press.
According to a report published in November 2019, travellers have greatly benefited from the abolition of roaming charges (Regulation 531/2012), with data usage abroad even increasing 17-fold in the summer of 2019 compared to the same period the previous year. Accordingly, the Commission considers that these benefits should be preserved.
It even suggests going further, notably on wholesale prices, i.e. the minimum prices that operators charge each other when their customers use other networks while roaming. It proposes a first reduction in these wholesale prices from 1 January 2022 and a second reduction from 1 January 2025. On the day after the implementation date of the new regulation, wholesale prices for voice calls will decrease from €0.032 to €0.022 per minute, reaching €0.019 per minute from 1 January 2025. Same downward trend is planned for messages and data: text messages will fall from €0.01 to €0.004 per SMS to reach €0.003 per SMS, and data will fall from €2.5 to €2 per gigabyte on 1 July 2022 to reach €1.5 per gigabyte in 2025.
For the rest, the Commission proposes to ensure that users access the same network quality and speed when using their phone plans in another Member State. It also suggests that they should be better informed of the additional costs that can arise from roaming calls.
Link to the proposal: http://bit.ly/2ZOaE25 (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)