Luxembourg, 27/06/2001 (Agence Europe) - Meeting in Luxembourg on Wednesday under the chairmanship of Swedish Minister Bjorn Rosengren, reached an agreement on the obligation to provide a universal service and on the .eu domain name. Having returned to this issue on several occasions during the day, Member States nevertheless wanted to wait for Parliament's stance before working out the details of the agreement. Ministers reached a common guideline on a third aspect of the package: the coordination of the use of radio frequencies. They also discussed the allocation of "UMTS" licences on the basis of a Commission communication of 20 March of this year, and the Netherlands proposed setting up a working party on the issue. The main elements of the debate on the telecom package were as follows:
Radio spectrum: the Council defined a common guideline on a "decision", the goal of which is to ensure coordination in the use of radio frequencies a Community level and "alignment when necessary to meet Community objectives". The decision will set up a committee composed of representatives of Member States, responsible for coordinating information and examining possible Commission harmonization proposals. The different sectors concerned by the use should be represented:
research, communication, television, radio, transport, police, defence, etc. "The decision does not affect the right of Member States to impose restrictions for necessities of a law enforcement and public security kind", notes the decision.
Universal service. The Council sought a common position on the directive that sets out the public service obligations for telecommunications operators and consumers rights, in the context of telecommunications liberalisation in Europe. The Parliament gave its position in June, during first reading, on the basis of the Harbour Report (see EUROPE of 20 June, p.14, and 2 June, p.16). Discrepancy mains relates to two points: 1) the financing of public service obligations: Member States should keep the choice of financing compensation to businesses that have to bear the cost of public services, either by the national budget or by a compensation fund financed by operators. Spain, which feared that this double system would create competition distortion between the Member States, obtained a declaration from the European Commission assuring that it would assess the impact the system would have on the way the internal market works; 2) obligation to diffuse: the Member States have divergent opinions on the exceptions allowed to the obligation to diffuse television and radio programmes. Belgium, in particular, feared that the "excessive charges" evoked by operators to escape such obligations could be a too subjective term.
Data protection. Pending the EP's position at first reading on the draft directive on data protection, ministers sought an agreement on two main points of discrepancy: 1) Unsolicited e-mails and fax: a blocking minority composed of France, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Luxembourg urged for an "opt out" system, supposing that advertisers may send unsolicited e-mails and faxes, unless the addressees are included on a red list. According to these four countries, this solution would be more coherent with the Directive on electronic commerce. The Parliament rapporteur, Marco Cappato, until now spoke in favour of the op-out system. On the contrary, most of the Member States want an opt-in system, which would further protect the consumers, since the receiver must have explicitly accepted to receive these communications. The compromise that was emerging on Wednesday late afternoon was to adopt the opt-in principal, with a four year derogation for the States which want it. Let us recall that the 1997 Directive foresees a mixed system for unsolicited telephone calls; 2) data retention: Sweden, Belgium, the United Kingdom and to a certain extent Denmark want to force operators to retain private data for a certain period to service the needs of the police and courts. The Commission insisted, as for it, for the companies only to retain the data for the time needed for billing, underlining the storage cost for the operators. The Presidency had proposed a compromise that gave the Member States the possibility of impose restrictions for reasons of national security.