With the elections due to take place on 9 June, the Belgian Presidency of the Council of the European Union will have a reduced mandate to try to complete the outstanding dossiers. Among them, the focus will be on the negotiations on the deployment of high-speed networks in the EU (‘Gigabit Infrastructure Act’). The EU27 adopted their position on 5 December (see EUROPE 13307/1) and the European Parliament’s rapporteur for the text, Alin Mituța (Renew Europe, Romanian), subsequently stated his ambition to reach a political agreement by February (see EUROPE 13309/34).
Before an agreement can be reached, the European co-legislators will have to agree on several aspects of the text, starting with the notion of tacit approval with regard to procedures for granting permits prior to the deployment or upgrading of networks.
The European Parliament is proposing that Member States should have two months in which to accept or reject the application for a permit, failing which the application would be deemed tacitly accepted. Some Member States may have exemptions where this provision is contrary to their national law. The Member States, for their part, have removed the notion of tacit approval of the text. The Commissioner for the Internal Market, Thierry Breton, said he was “concerned” by this decision, claiming that tacit approval of planning permission was one of the measures designed to speed up the process.
According to the European Parliament, Member States would have 15 days to check whether a request for a permit is fully documented, and then two months to examine requests for authorisation. However, this two-month period may be extended by one month in “exceptional and duly justified” cases. The Commission’s initial proposal was for four months.
Negotiations will also focus on specific provisions – which are important to the European Parliament – to ensure that access obligations to host network infrastructure are extended to commercial buildings in areas with poor coverage and where no public buildings are available to host such infrastructure.
On the part of the EU Council, a number of derogations had been introduced at the request of certain Member States, for critical national infrastructures. “For security and defence issues, the negotiating mandate must maintain flexibility to take account of national situations”, said the French Minister for Telecommunications, Jean-Noël Barrot.
Finally, although there is already a consensus on the importance of the subject, future negotiations between the EU Council and Parliament will also have to cover charges to end-users 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 have already indicated that they will show “flexibility” on this issue, to allow the rules to continue to apply without interruption. (Original version in French by Thomas Mangin)