Brussels, 27/08/2007 (Agence Europe) - The Commission is to present a legislative package end October or early November on strengthening the internal market for telecommunications. This was confirmed on Monday 27 August by the spokesman for Viviane Reding, European Commissioner for the Information Society and Media. Currently under consultation between the different services, the package will be composed of three legislative proposals, two directives amending the existing directives and a regulation establishing a European telecommunications agency. The Commission is aiming at adoption of these measures according to codecision procedure in 2009 for application within the European Union from early 2010 on.
The creation of a European telecommunications agency, that Ms Reding has been advocating for months, is likely to come up against the resistance of member states that tend to protect their traditional national operators. According to a source familiar with the dossier, this is the case in Germany with its traditional operator, Deutsche Telekom. On the other hand, it is said that half the member states whose national operators are active across borders would be in favour of the initiative, as well as the small and/or new member states that have relatively recent regulators.
The European telecommunications agency - or the European Electronic Communications Market Authority (EECMA) - would work in network with all national regulators and the Commission. Composed of 27 national agency officials, it would aim to develop the possibility for regulators to act together at European level, an official explains. The European agency would then take measures of a technical kind by simple majority of its members. These measures would take on binding legal force once the Commission has adopted a decision to set them in place, according to the model currently working for the European Agency for the Evaluation of Medicinal Products (EMEA), based in London. This is almost an automatic mechanism as, for the EMEA, the Commission endorses measures recommended 95% of the time. (mb)