Negotiators from the Council of the EU and the European Parliament are meeting on Tuesday 26 October to try to reach an agreement on extending free data roaming within the EU for 10 years. The current system of abolishing roaming charges will expire on 30 June 2022 (see EUROPE 12665/9).
“The discussions will be intense, as time is running out”, said a parliamentary source to EUROPE; they also stated that they were “optimistic” that an agreement could be reached before the end of the year.
However, there are several important issues that need to be resolved before an agreement can be reached. Among them, there should be a focus on the price of data while abroad.
In this respect, the EU Council intends to set the price per gigabyte abroad at €1.50. The European Parliament – and some northern EU Member States – are more in favour of adopting a tariff of €1 per gigabyte.
“This is the main issue, although there are differences in the levels of taxation when it comes to roaming. This is a rather sensitive issue for the telecommunication community”, summarised the same source.
Furthermore, another source added, the interinstitutional negotiations (‘trilogue’) should also succeed in putting in place points that are sensitive issues for the European Parliament, such as the reduction of wholesale caps or the issue of intra-European calls (see EUROPE 12812/3).
“On some points, the European Parliament and the EU Council remain far apart, but they will have to take a step towards each other. No one has any interest in creating a situation where the old regulation expires and the new one is not yet in place”, she concluded. (Original version in French by Thomas Mangin)