The Telecommunications Ministers of the EU Member States, meeting at the Council in Brussels on Tuesday 5 December, adopted their position on the deployment of high-speed networks in the EU (‘Gigabit Infrastructure Act’) (see EUROPE 13253/2). This was followed by the first round of interinstitutional negotiations (‘trilogues’).
“Once the new rules have been adopted and implemented, we will be able to respond effectively to the ever-growing need of our citizens and businesses for access to networks with much greater capacity than we have today”, commented Spain’s Secretary of State for Telecommunications and Digital Infrastructure, María González Veracruz.
The Council of the EU has made a number of amendments to the Commission’s proposal presented on 23 February (see EUROPE 13128/9), the main aims of which are to speed up network rollout, ensure legal certainty and transparency for the economic players involved, and make the planning and rollout processes more efficient for operators of public electronic communications networks.
The text should also serve to reduce the costs of deploying electronic communications infrastructures, due in part to the procedures for granting permits prior to the deployment or upgrading of networks. On this point, the European co-legislators will have to reach agreement on the notion of tacit approval of the text.
The Council of the EU has deleted this notion from the text, whereas the European Parliament is proposing that Member States should have two months to accept or reject the application for a permit, failing which the application would be deemed tacitly accepted.
The European Commissioner for Internal Market, Thierry Breton, described the decision as a “matter of concern”, saying that tacit approval of planning permission was one of the measures designed to speed up the process.
“The proposal aims to overcome deployment problems. Civil engineering work accounts for up to 70% of capital expenditure on deployment, and better management could save up to 30% of costs”, he also pointed out.
A future balance to be found on charges for intra-EU calls and text messages
In addition, the transition period has been set at 24 months, an exception for a transition period for small municipalities has been included and the text specifies that optical fibre is not the only one that can be used to achieve very high network capacity.
“We insisted on technological neutrality: the regulation must defend it by offering opportunities for fixed and wireless technologies”, summed up Latvian parliamentary secretary Ģirts Dubkēvičs.
At the request of certain Member States, a number of derogations for critical national infrastructures have also been included in the text. “For security and defence issues, the negotiating mandate must maintain flexibility to take account of national situations”, commented the French Minister for Telecommunications, Jean-Noël Barrot.
Future negotiations between the Council of the EU and the Parliament will also have to deal with end-user charges for calls and text messages within the EU. The current rules, capping intra-EU calls at 19 cents per minute, will expire in May 2024.
Several Member States, including Poland, have indicated that they will show “flexibility” on this issue. “The rules expire in a few months. We need to extend the provisions so that the favourable conditions continue to apply”, said Pawel Lewandowski, Poland’s Under-Secretary of State.
For others, such as the Netherlands, on the other hand, a balance will have to be found in this area. “We are in favour of an upward revision of the thresholds that are about to expire, and the abolition of additional fees, even if Parliament has perhaps gone a little too far”, said the Dutch State Secretary for Digitisation, Alexandra van Huffelen. (Original version in French by Thomas Mangin)